A man has been convicted of conspiring to import more than $300,000 worth of cocaine in FedEx packages.

However, his alleged accomplice was cleared after protesting that he was duped into picking up the parcels as a favour to his disabled friend.

Andre Phillip Hill, 53, and Raynol Todd, 51, had been on trial at Supreme Court since May 5 in a case affected by numerous delays.

Mr. Hill told the jury that Todd asked him to collect his "Christmas gifts" from FedEx on Christmas Eve 2004 because he suffers from a bad back. When he was arrested leaving the parcel delivery company, he thought at first it was all a silly prank.

Having been cleared by the unanimous verdict of a jury yesterday, Mr. Hill's lawyer Rick Woolridge said his plight should serve as a warning to others.

"This is a climate in which the usual Bermudian culture of helping your fellow man and being kind to one another is not always in one's own personal best interest.

"I shudder to think that we've reached the time in our society when we advise people not to help others, but be careful," he urged.

During the trial, each of the accused men blamed the other.

The drugs entered Bermuda in three boxes delivered to Federal Express in Serpentine Road, Pembroke, from Trinidad on December 23 2004. A Customs officer discovered the cocaine inside and alerted the Police. Mr. Hill was arrested after picking up the boxes on December 24, as he headed from the office toward a waiting taxi.

He protested that he was collecting them as a favour to Todd, who asked him to pick up the Christmas gifts for his family because he has a bad back. Mr. Hill told detectives where to find Todd, who was waiting in a car in the nearby Belco car park, and they arrested him too. He also told how Todd gave him a piece of paper with the parcel tracking numbers on it, along with $50 to get a taxi to FedEx.

Mr. Hill explained to the jury that he only realised they contained drugs when the Police arrested him - which he thought at first was a joke.

Mr. Hill did admit to handing FedEx a fake note from "Angela Bassett" - the person listed as the recipient of the parcels - authorising him to pick them up. However, he said this was only to hurry things up as he had been denied permission to collect them without a note, and Todd told him Ms Bassett lived miles away in St. David's.

A Police handwriting expert told the jury it was "highly probable" that the note with the tracking numbers had been penned by Todd.

Throughout the trial, Todd denied sending his companion to unwittingly collect the packages. He refuted suggestions from Mr. Hill's lawyer Mr. Woolridge that he was the brains behind the plot and said he was merely resting his bad back in the Belco parking lot when Hill happened to be arrested.

Todd's lawyer Elizabeth Christopher told the jury that Todd was a convenient person for Hill to point the finger at. However, the jury rejected this explanation and unanimously found Todd guilty after two hours of deliberations yesterday.

They cleared Mr. Hill of the conspiracy charge by a unanimous decision, along with a second charge of handling the cocaine with intent to supply it.

Todd now faces what could be a lengthy jail sentence and Puisne Judge Carlisle Greaves remanded him into custody until pre-sentence reports are prepared.

There were legal arguments at the start of the trial - without the jury present - during which both Mr. Woolridge and Ms Christopher urged Puisne Judge Carlisle Greaves to throw the case out due to the delay of more than four years since the events in question.

The delay was partly due to the untimely death of 33-year-old Detective Sergeant Andrew Woolridge, the officer leading the investigation, in May 2005. However, Principal Crown counsel Michael McColm said the case had already gone slowly before then, although he could offer no explanation why.

The judge agreed there had been an unreasonable delay, but ruled that this did not prejudice the case to the extent that a fair trial was impossible.

Mr. Woolridge said yesterday: "Unfortunately the judge didn't see force in our arguments. It was certainly going to be a point of appeal, but by the grace of God we didn't need to, and now Mr. Hill is a free man."

Mr. Hill's poor health caused further delays to the trial, which had to be postponed on several occasions when blood pressure problems caused him to collapse. Mr. Woolridge claimed this was a symptom of the pressure he was suffering, having been "used" firstly by Todd and then by the prosecution in order to bring Todd to justice.

"He has suffered a lot of stress, both him and his wife, for whom I'm grateful that this nightmare of almost four years is over," he said.