Crown court for possession. Why?

[26minutes]

I'm not in a position to find out why myself and so there's a lot of speculation on my part.

A few months ago the person in question was in court (magistrates), they were expecting a prison sentence. I found out they had been found/pleaded guilty, I don't know which, of possession of a class c drug & either a class a or b drug. It was adjourned for sentencing. It was then adjourned a couple of times and last week it was sent to the crown later in the year for trial. It is definitely trial not sentencing so I'm confused as the guilty verdict had already been given & the case was awaiting sentencing.

I have lots of scenarios running through my head but I have no knowledge of how the law works so don't know how accurate they are. They wouldn't spend money sending it to court if its 'just' possession would they? And especially not if it's a first offence (it may not be for all I know). Why would it now be going to crown if it is just possession nothing more? I could understand if it was going to crown for sentencing as I would just presume they wanted to give a bigger sentence than is possible in the magistrates.

I also know that as the trial hasn't occurred then the info won't be in the public domain so there's no way of me finding out for sure until afterwards (if there is a guilty verdict of course) but I would be interested to hear the theory of someone who is experienced with this kind of thing.

Thanks

[belledechocchipcookie]

If they had a fairly large amount on them then they could have been charged with 'possession with the intent to supply.' IIRC, they can't deal with this in the magistrates court as it's more severe then possession. (My law is rusty so I may be wrong).

[MitchiestInge]

I was going to ask 'intent to supply' too

[Catslikehats]

If it has gone for trial either:

i) he didn't plead guilty

ii) he pleaded guilty and has since changed his plea (this is very unusual and can only be done in certain circumstances)

iii) he pleaded guilty to part of the offence: eg. guilty to posession of class C, not guilty to possession of class A/B. In this case sentence on the plea would be adjourned until after a finding on the second part.

[emsyj]

Some offences are triable either way, so the defendant can choose wehther to be tried by mags or in crown court. Mags you have higher statistical chance of conviction, but lower sentence - crown court less chance of being convicted. So sometimes you might choose crown court (jury trial).

Gosh, not done criminal law since law school so hopefully someone up to date will come and answer in a more articulate way!

[26minutes]

Hmm, you've all pretty much confirmed all of my theorys. My original thought when they 1st went up was that they were up for possession with intent to supply, had pleaded guilty to possession in the hope of getting off of the intent part. So same idea as queenofdenial's point 3 but I'm thinking intent is the 2nd part of it. I know this person has dealt drugs in the past and I have a very strong suspiscion that they do so now. Most of their friends deal drugs as well and from hearing conversations between these people in the past they always said that if they ever were caught with a large quantity on them they would say that they were a heavy drug user and it was all for personal use.

emsyj, Crown would be prefereable for them as the person is very very good at pulling the wool over peoples eyes and acting like the injured party so crown would be better for them as a jury I think would be more likely to fall for their woe is me act whereas a magistrate has probably seen it all before and isn't going to be conned.

Oh I wish I knew for sure!