A 21 year old single mother of three is in jail tonight after she was busted in of all places the magistrate's court this afternoon with weed which she allegedly tried to pass off to her jailed boyfriend.
The accused is Vanessa Stevens and police say this morning she handed a cigarette box wrapped in a blue rag to remanded prisoner Levi Bahadur. On intuition an officer assigned to the court found three cigarettes and a bag of weed. It weighed in at 12.3 grams and Stevens was immediately arrested. This afternoon she joined her boyfriend on the wrong side of the law she was arraigned for possession of a controlled substance.
The single mother pleaded her case before Chief Magistrate Herbert Lord this afternoon admitting that she did hand Bahadur the cigarette box. But Stevens' contention was that a man had asked her to give it to Bahadur. To that Magistrate Lord told her that she could additionally charged with contempt of court and the rarely heard charges of "a person conversing with a prisoner without permission" and "conveying an item to a prisoner."
Stevens was fined $4,000 for the possession charge in default 18 months in jail. She had to pay $1,000 up front and the balance by the end of October. Stevens couldn't come up with the $1,000 and so despite her tearful pleas that she is a single mother and has no one to take care of children, she was taken to jail.