Last updated at 12:19, Saturday, 09 February 2013

A man is facing a prison sentence after police found a £1,300 cocktail of drugs at his home in Carlisle.

But because of an apparent disagreement between two judges 26-year-old Aaron Giacopazzi is having to wait to find out how long he will have to spend in jail.

Giacopazzi was expecting to be sentenced yesterday after previously pleading guilty to possessing 168 ecstasy tablets with intent to possess them, and to possessing cocaine and cannabis for his own use.

But after being told that at the earlier hearing another judge had taken a less serious view of the offence that he did, Judge Paul Batty QC, ruled that Giacopazzi should be sentenced by that judge – Recorder Louis Browne – so that he did not feel he had been treated unfairly.

The court heard Giacopazzi was arrested after police raided his home in Gloucester Road, Carlisle, and found 19 ecstasy tablets in a polythene bag in his pocket.

They also found another 149 tablets and a rock of crack cocaine on top of a kitchen cupboard, and a small amount of cannabis in the living room.

Giacopazzi pleaded guilty on the basis that, while he would have used some of the tablets himself, he would have sold most of them to his friends, whom he knew liked to use the drugs.

His barrister Gerard Doran said that at the earlier hearing Recorder Browne had told Giacopazzi the offence was one of the least serious of its type.

But Judge Batty, who as the Honorary Recorder of Carlisle is the city’s senior judge, said he viewed it differently, and considered it to be more serious.

First published at 12:06, Saturday, 09 February 2013
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk