Harrogate drug dealer caught with over 700 MDMA tablets spared jail

Mark Binns, 37, was arrested at his council flat in Harrogate where police found 767 MDMA tablets wrapped in a plastic bag, York Crown Court heard.

Binns, of Station View, offered police a novel excuse for possessing the potentially lethal drugs – that he didn’t know what they were.

Prosecutor Mike Greenhalgh said police swooped on Binns’s home for an “entirely unrelated matter” in July 2020 but chanced upon hundreds of Ecstasy-type tablets in his bedroom.

The drugs had a street value of up to £640.

“He was asked about those (tablets) and said they weren’t his and didn’t know if they were drugs or not,” added Mr Greenhalgh.

Then, during police questioning, Binns told officers he was holding the drugs for a friend but wouldn’t give them a name.

However, he pleaded guilty to possessing a Class A drug with intent to supply when the case reached court and appeared for sentence today.

Mr Greenhalgh said the prosecution didn’t “take any issue” with Binns’s version of events as he had fully owned up to the offence.

Binns, who is on benefits, had seven previous convictions for 10 offences including possessing cannabis with intent to supply from 2011 and breaching court orders.

For the new drug offence, Binns could have expected an immediate jail sentence of anything between two and four years.

But his barrister Kelleigh Lodge was spared the need for mitigation when judge Simon Hickey said he was going to spare him jail and give him another chance.

Mr Hickey told Binns: “Anyone who deals in Ecstasy is dabbling in a very pernicious drug.

"People can take just the one tablet and it’s enough to kill them, or it’s life-changing.”

The judge accepted Binns’s claim that he was keeping the drugs for a friend, albeit a “very dangerous friend”.

He said that “unusually” for such an offence, he could suspend the inevitable jail sentence because of Binns’s “lesser role”, his vulnerability and the two-and-a-half-year delay in the case reaching court.

Binns was given a 20-month suspended prison sentence and ordered to complete 20 rehabilitation-activity days.