A 22-year-old woman who admitted smuggling $23,150 worth of drugs into the island was jailed for a year on Friday.

Magistrates' Court heard that Ashley Mussenden was detained after she was stopped by a customs officer at the airport when she arrived on a flight from London.

She was arrested on suspicion of drug importation and taken to the King Edward Memorial Hospital for a CT scan, which revealed the drugs in her system.

Magistrate Khamisi Tokunbo told Mussenden, from St George's, that her offences were serious.

Mr Tokunbo added: “You gambled; you knew what you were doing.”

He sentenced Mussenden to 12 months in jail for importation of ecstasy and eight months imprisonment for the cannabis offence.

He ordered the sentences to run concurrently, with time spent on remand taken into consideration.

The offences happened in September last year.

The prosecution recommended a prison sentence of nine to 18 months for the offence.

Paul Wilson, defence lawyer, asked the court for leniency.

He added his client had experienced a difficult childhood and had made recent attempts to turn her life around.

Mussenden told the court: “I know what I did was stupid. I was desperate.”

She said that she had been trying to move her life forward since her arrest.

Mussenden added: “I am not my mistake.”

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