Chief Justice Austin Ward yesterday blasted a suggestion that Government might allow the court to order mandatory drug rehabilitation.

Mr. Justice Ward's comments were in response to a plea by defence lawyer Mark Pettingill before the sentencing of a St. George's man in the Supreme Court.

Lyndon Wayne Smith, 30, of Wellington Street, pleaded guilty to 17 offences relating to cheque fraud between March 9 and 10, including two counts of stealing cheques, five counts of forging, five counts of uttering, and five counts of defrauding.

He also admitted charges of intent to defraud, making false documents, uttering them and stealing on January 7.

And Smith asked that another 114 similar offences be taken into consideration.

Only giving details of the January incident since particulars for the March offences had been read out at an earlier hearing, Crown counsel Leighton Rochester told the court that on January 9 Franzine Burgess reported to Police that Smith had forged and cashed a cheque which she gave him.

Two days earlier Smith had asked her to lend him $196.30 so that he could buy medication for his 80-year-old grandfather with whom he lived.

Mrs. Burgess wrote the cheque payable to a local pharmacy.

Her husband later told her to put a stop-payment on the cheque, but Smith had already used the cheque to purchase food.

Mr. Rochester said Smith had obtained the food by whiting out the cheque payable to Hamilton Pharmacy and replaced it with his grandfather's name and had his grandfather endorse the back of the cheque.

Smith then took the cheque to Harrington Hundreds supermarket where he used it to purchase food and other personal items.

Bank of Bermuda employees contacted Mrs. Burgess on January 8 about the altered cheque and faxed her a copy of it.

Upon noticing that the cheque had been altered, Mrs. Burgess called the Police.

Smith was arrested on January 15 at St. George's Police Station where he admitted to forging, cashing the cheque, and using the money for other purposes other than intended by the complainant.

Mr. Rochester pointed out that Smith had a previous conviction for similar offences.

But Mr. Pettingill described Smith as having a "Jekyll and Hyde type personality''.

He explained that Smith was a college-educated church-goer whose "sole reason for criminal activity is because of his acute heroin addiction''.

Mr. Pettingill said Smith was one of the best candidates he had seen for rehabilitation and that it would be "a profound tragedy if we (the courts) just lock him away''.

He suggested that rehabilitation in a regimented overseas drug addiction programme could be the only thing to break Smith's habit.

But Mr. Justice Ward reminded Mr. Pettingill that he did not have the judicial power to put Smith in any type of programme.

When Mr. Pettingill put forward his hope that the courts would soon be able to order a mandatory drug rehabilitation programmes as part of a criminal sentence, Mr. Justice Ward snapped: "We will get no expansion of power in that regard''.

"This Government will not give the courts power over that amount of money,'' he said.

"The NDC (National Drug Commission) only gets half a million dollars a year.

And that's an agency specialising in drug problems. Do you really think they'll give that sort of power to the courts?'' Mr. Pettingill responded: "If they spend $35,000 per year to incarcerate a man, why not? It could be spent on something constructive.'' But Mr. Justice Ward sentenced Smith to a four-and-a-half-year prison term.

This included one year for counts one, three, and five of the March offences, four and a half years for counts two, four, six through 17, and four years for the first three counts of the January offences.

The sentences were to run concurrently.

But Mr. Justice Ward explained that Smith may only have to spend 18 months at Westgate Correctional Facility if arrangements are made to enrol him in an overseas rehabilitation programme.

However, if Smith failed to do so, he warned, he had to serve the balance of his sentence in prison.