courier who was found not guilty of handling more than $1 million worth of cannabis with intent to supply.

At the end of lengthy legal arguments, Chief Justice Austin Ward directed the jury foreman to return not guilty verdicts to both of the charges against 30-year-old Gladstone Headlam.

Headlam, of the Railway Trail, Sandys Parish was charged with handling cannabis and handling the drug with intent to supply.

"This is a case of suspicion only,''Mr. Justice Ward said. "He worked for Federal Express and the $1 million worth of cannabis came in and he drove the van.

"The way he handled the sample gave rise to questions but that is not enough to convict him.'' Lawyer Mark Pettingill, representing Headlam, said that by the end of the Crown's presentation of the case "there simply was not a case and the judge ruled accordingly''.

"In the end the crown did not have a case against him,'' he said. "He was an employee of Federal Express and he was acting in the course of his duties and there was no evidence to suggest that he acted outside of his employment.

"From the very beginning we were concerned about the quality of the evidence against him. He has a clean record and it is a shame that he had to be put through this. It could have been reviewed beforehand.'' During the trial, the jury heard that an Airport Customs dog alerted Customs officers to part of a Federal Express shipment on April 11, 1996.

Narcotics officers were notified after the packages, addressed to a home in Somerset, were X-rayed and found to contain 29 packages of plant material, which was later found to be cannabis.

The retail value of the 55-pound drugs shipment was put at more than $1 million.

The boxes were repacked with dummy packages and returned to the Airport freight shed that night. The following day the boxes were taken to Hamilton and loaded into a delivery truck that Headlam was driving.

Police then launched a surveillance on the Federal Express van although they lost sight of it several times during their surveillance.

Headlam was arrested after making a stop at the Southampton Princess. He told Police he had been flagged down by a man and asked to deliver the packages to an address in Warwick.