cannabis will be sentenced later this month.

Yesterday, a jury took three and a half hours to convict Ronald Henry Romanowicz of bringing $210,000 of cannabis and cannabis resin into Bermuda from the United States.

They returned a majority verdict of nine to three on charges of importing cannabis and cannabis resin, and on possession with intent to supply cannabis and cannabis resin.

Charges of handling cannabis and cannabis resin will stay on file after Chief Justice Austin Ward directed no verdicts be returned.

Chief Justice Ward will sentence Romanowicz, 31, of Salem, Virginia, on February 22.

The verdicts came after a three day trial in which the Supreme Court heard how eleven packages of drugs were discovered after the defendant had been intercepted at the Airport.

The drugs had been stitched into the lining of the case, which Romanowicz claimed he had borrowed from a friend and had not touched until his arrival in Bermuda from Newark in November last year.

He claimed a friend and his fiancee may have set him up to act as an unwitting courier. And he said he knew nothing of the drugs or where they had come from.

But the prosecution said that he failed to give any names to the Police until two days after his arrest.

They claimed he was fully aware of what he was carrying and could only be transporting that amount of drugs in order to supply them to someone in Bermuda.

Romanowicz was remanded in custody pending his sentence.

DRUGS DGS