Customs officers found a bullet in his baggage.

Sean Smith, 27, was given a three-month prison sentence suspended for a year and fined $500 after he pleaded guilty in Magistrates' Court to possessing ammunition without a licence.

Smith's lawyer, Mr. Marc Telemaque, said his client found the 35-calibre, hollow-point bullet on the streets of Atlanta and forgot he had dropped it in his carry-on bag when he returned to Bermuda on March 5.

Police accepted Smith's explanation, prosecutor Insp. Peter Duffy told Senior Magistrate the Wor. Will Francis. He joined Mr. Telemaque in asking Mr.

Francis, "if you are considering a sentence of imprisonment, that it be suspended''.

Mr. Francis, who in December sent a crew member from the container ship Somers Isles to prison for three months for possessing a single bullet, was concerned that the message he sent had not been received.

"The whole object of what I said was to put the fear of God into people,'' Mr. Francis said. "That is what I'm attempting to do. But it seems that the fear of God has not been put into them.'' Mr. Telemaque said Smith, who is single, was trying to raise money to continue his education in interior design.

He went to Atlanta on a vacation and found the bullet on the street. Not having had "the honour of serving in the Bermuda Regiment, the sight of a bullet was something novel to him'', Mr. Telemaque said.

He picked it up and showed it to his friends. But the novelty wore off, and he forgot he dropped it in a side pocket of his bag. "There was in fact no attempt to conceal this,'' he said.

How could Smith drop a bullet in his bag, after all that was said in the case of the ship's crew member, Mr. Francis asked.

"I can't even for one moment explain it,'' Mr. Telemaque said.

But he said the two cases were "eminently distinguishable''.

The case of Somers Isles chief engineer Peter Focke had to be viewed against the backdrop of the gun amnesty under way in Bermuda at the time, he said. And Focke possessed his bullet intentionally.

Insp. Duffy said while Focke showed "callous disregard'' for the Firearms Act and the gun amnesty, "the prosecution accepts that it was forgetfulness'' in Smith's case.

On summary conviction, Smith faced a maximum of one year in prison and/or a $500 fine.

By imposing the maximum fine while suspending the prison sentence, Mr. Francis said he hoped others coming to Bermuda would know "you're coming to a Country that does not want the ordinary citizen to be possessing weapons, or anything connected with them''.