Last updated at 10:23, Saturday, 13 October 2012

A jury has found three people accused of illegally selling plant food as a drug through an online gardening business not guilty.

Judge Barbara Forrester ordered a jury to return not guilty verdicts on the five charges of conspiracy to supply a controlled drug that Michael Cox, 28, and Terry Hyde, 29, and Helen Hyde, 31, faced.

The trio were alleged to have supplied the controlled drugs between April 2010 and April 2011 from a house in Silloth and a corner shop in Workington.

But, after listening to representations, Judge Forrester ordered the jury to return not guilty verdicts.

She said: “The prosecution would have to have made you sure that the defendants knew that what they were supplying was illegal.

“There is nothing that indicates that they thought the drugs were illegal. I order you to return not guilty verdicts on my direction.”

The jury had been told that the drugs found had previously been referred to as a ‘legal high’ but were illegal when they were sold.

At the time of the raid, Mr Cox, of Station Road, Workington, and Terry Hyde, of Burnswalk Terrace in Silloth, had been equal partners in an internet business which traded under H and C Garden Supplies.

First published at 10:19, Saturday, 13 October 2012
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk