Farm owner cleared over drug charges

A Monmouthshire farm owner accused of plotting to grow cannabis was cleared last week after two successive juries failed to agree on verdicts.

Last April, a jury at Gloucester crown court was discharged without returning a verdict in the case of Philip Johns, 59, of Wilcae Terrace, Raglan - and last Wednesday (5th March) the same thing happened with a second jury.
After a retirement of more than six hours the foreman of the retrial jury said they were unlikely to agree even if given more time.
Judge Jamie Tabor QC discharged them - and prosecutor Ian Dixey then announced he would not be seeking another retrial.
He offered no further evidence and the judge formally found Mr Johns not guilty.
Mr Johns, who owns Glannau Farm at Lydart, near Monmouth, had been accused of growing 143 cannabis plants there as part of a bigger conspiracy which also involved sites in Cinderford, Gloucestershire, and Tenbury Wells, Worcestershire.
The jury heard that when police raided Glannau Farm they found the 143 cannabis plants and 150 seedlings growing in three lorry containers in the grounds.
The containers were partly below ground and had a water supply and electricity being channelled from the farmhouse.
Mr Johns denied conspiring with two other men, Andrew O'Donnell and Robert Ockleton, to produce cannabis between 1st April 2011 and 14th July 2012.
He also denied abstracting electricity to power the light and heat in the containers.
Prosecutor Ian Dixey said the trail that led to Mr Johns' farm started on 1st March 2010 when police keeping surveillance on O'Donnell and Ockleton saw them meet and go to the Quedgeley East Business Park near Gloucester.
There they bought £3,500 worth of hydroponic growing equipment from a business called Cultim8 and they drove it to an area near Chippenham.
They then transferred some of the equipment to another vehicle which police followed to Mr Johns' farm near Trellech, said Mr Dixey.
Later, an industrial unit on the Forest Vale business park in Cinderford was raided and there 400 cannabis plants were found growing - part of the same alleged plot, he said.
On 8th May officers with a search warrant went to the farm and arrested Mr Johns. They found the containers full of cannabis plants and later tests showed Ockleton's DNA was on an Oasis Citrus bottle at the scene.
Mr Johns was arrested and told police he had rented out the containers for furniture storage and had no idea there was cannabis growing inside.
On 13th July that year the police re-arrested all three alleged conspirators and a raid on O'Donnell's farm in Tenbury Wells revealed a subterranean cannabis growing operation in four buried shipping containers and a steel portakabin.
O'Donnell, the alleged mastermind of the plot, had three mobile phones - each of which had Mr Johns' number on it, said Mr Dixey.
"When Mr Johns was interviewed on this occasion he said he knew Mr O'Donnell after meeting him at a machinery sale.
"He claimed his only contact with him was to do with boats.
"He also admitted knowing Mr Ockleton who, he said, had phoned him out of the blue to ask about a pony.
"He confirmed that he, Mr Johns, had financial problems and that all his savings had been spent on doing up the farm. He said he had a large mortgage and no real income to support it.
"He maintained he had not rented the units to Ockleton or O'Donnell. He said a man he didn't know had asked to rent the units for £330 to store furniture. He said he rarely saw the man after that.
"He denied that Ockleton and O'Donnell had anything to do with the units and he denied that he was aware that hydroponic equipment had been delivered there.
"He had O'Donnell's number stored in his phone under the initials JCB and claimed he did not know who that was. However the phone records show he had very regular contact with O'Donnell."
In evidence, Mr Johns told the jury it was only after O'Donnell's arrest that the light began to dawn about what had been going on.
He then thought ‘What a fool I have been' for trusting the people who were using the containers, he said.
He blamed O'Donnell, for taking advantage of him and his land.
"I regarded him as a friend," Mr Johns told the jury. "He would come down there saying he was interested in engines and machinery and asking to look at what I had got.
"He knew my routine and when I would be on the farm each day and when I wouldn't," he said.
Although he visited the farm almost every day to feed his 50 sheep, 30 horses and seven cattle, he did not see what was going on in the containers and he did not realise that the electricity supply had been by-passed, he said.
Neither did he notice large ventilation pipes which had been fitted to the containers, he said.
Ockleton and O'Donnell will be sentenced at a later date.

http://www.monmouth-today.co.uk 13/03/2014