A drug smuggler faces a long prison sentence after being found guilty of importing nearly $200,000 of cannabis hidden in a false floor of a crate.

The jury took more than three hours to reach a majority ten to one verdict finding Terry Eugene Darrell guilty of both importing a controlled drug and possession with intent to supply.

One of the jurors was missing after a motorbike accident. Defence lawyer Mark Pettingill was absent when the jury reached its verdict but colleague Richard Horseman left open the possibility of an appeal.

He said: "The jury were brought back in by the judge who was about to tell them they should now go for a majority verdict if they hadn't reached a unanimous verdict but they had already taken this upon themselves and announced their majority verdict.

"There might be grounds for appeal.'' Darrell, who will appear for mention on March 1, could get life for the offence but a sentence of around eight years is more likely.

The 43-year-old cabinetmaker brought in the crate in August 13, 1998, while moving his business from Florida to Bermuda but he had no invoices to pick it up.

So he concocted a fax from a nonexistent company saying the crate contained used items, which meant he could pick up his crate simply by paying a deposit.

When he arrived to pick up his crate -- which contained fans, doors and shower fittings -- Darrell played it cool and even suggested leaving the crate on the dock before saying he should get a truck to remove it all.

Prosecution witness Customs officer Hillary Rodill said he thought Darrell had done this to test the reaction of the customs officers. But the customs officers, who knew the crate contained drugs, didn't rise to the bait.

They told him he could leave the crate if he wished. So Darrell guessed they did not know the crate contained drugs and he was safe to take it. Darrell made every effort to play the innocent -- even smashing apart his crate with a hammer on the dock but leaving its base, with its costly cargo intact.

A friend was asked to deliver the wood and the other items to Darrell's Dockyard workshop Wood Dimensions -- which Darrell hoped would indicate he was unaware of the contents should he ever be caught.

And once at the workshop, Darrell made no effort to hide his haul -- when Police and Customs officers raided him later that evening they found the crate base slung in a lumber bin which Darrell pointed out to them.

Despite his relaxed air in the witness box several pieces of evidence undid his innocence act. His friend and prosecution witness Walter Green, who Darrell got to deliver the wood, said Darrell had said the cheap chipboard crate wood was worth keeping -- yet in the witness box Darrell said the wood was trash and he had only taken it because Customs officers had told him to.

Cannabis smuggler facing prison When Darrell turned up to collect his crate, Customs officers noted he appeared agitated. Darrell said this was because he had paid a $700 deposit for the crate only to find the contents were worth very little. Darrell said he only recognised a few of the items in the crate but claimed Customs had told him he had to take it.

However one of the Customs officers said during the trial that they had told Darrell he was under no obligation to take it. Crown counsel Sandra Bacchus said: "You paid a $700 deposit on items you knew nothing about and which you say were worth $100 yet for some reason you say you felt you had to take this crate?'' Mr. Green also remembered Darrell telling him that someone had been sending things using Darrell's name but it wasn't a problem as Customs were going to check it out.

Prosecutor Ms. Bacchus said Darrell, an experienced businessman, should have suspected something was wrong if he really was innocent.

In her closing statement Ms. Bacchus said: "He didn't have an invoice so he miraculously produces a fax which says it has used tools in it and he can get it off the dock.

"But when he got to the dock he told the Customs officer that he had invoices so an appointment for an appraisal of the goods by the Customs officer was cancelled so when he left that crate nobody was going to look.

"He said earlier that the wood was trash but when the officers came it was safely stored in the loft.'' Ms Bacchus said Mr. Darrell's fax, stating his shipment was in New York, was from a company that had gone out of business. She pointed out that it had come from Florida and hadn't been addressed to Mr. Darrell.

However Mr. Pettingill had said in his closing arguments that if Darrell, of Coral Acres Drive, Southampton, was guilty, he would not have taken such extraordinary risks such as smashing apart the crate at the dock.

Mr. Pettingill asked the jury: "If you had something worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, would you send someone else off with it to park it God knows where? It's another roll of the dice.

"If I had sent you $100,000, the first thing you would do with it would be to count it. Yet it goes in the bin -- it's put away, not even hidden.'' Mr. Pettingill stressed the war on drugs was important but stressed the danger if the clamour for sentencing meant an innocent man was jailed.