A 32-year-old Jamaican was yesterday jailed for seven years for cocaine importation.

Sydney Lesley Miller was questioned by Customs authorities when he arrived on the Island on an American Airlines flight last October.

He quickly admitted having swallowed cocaine pellets after a search, the court heard, and was taken into custody and conveyed to hospital.

Thirty-eight pellets, containing a total of 265.4 grams of cocaine and worth an estimated $82,900, were recovered.

Crown counsel Graveney Bannister asked the Acting Judge Charles-Etta Simmons for a stiff sentence which would deter anyone else considering bringing drugs into Bermuda.

Miller's lawyer, Mark Pettingill, argued that his client was co-operative with Police, was remorseful and was himself a victim because his poverty was taken advantage of by the real drug dealers who were not and will not be before the court.

Mr. Pettingill added that no useful purpose would be served by keeping him in prison at taxpayers' expense and the deterrent would not be heard by those most likely to act as drug mules.

The message, he said, should be sent to the drug dealers themselves.

"If we are sending it to those people they are going to laugh at us," he said. "The mule is a victim, driven by poverty, taken advantage of because of his poverty."

Miller earned the equivalent of US$10 a week and had a young daughter, he said.

"Justice is not going to be served by locking this man up for any length of time," said Mr. Pettingill before asking for a sentence not exceeding five years.

Miller said he had accepted Jesus Christ as his "personal Saviour" and asked the people of Bermuda to forgive him.

"I will do everything in my power to tell the youth say no to drugs and yes to life," he said.

Mrs. Justice Simmons described his crime as a "serious and destructive force in our society" before imposing a seven-year sentence.