A mum handed her fellow "Macca Line" drugs gang member a rock of crack cocaine in the dock at Liverpool Crown Court moments before they were due to be sentenced.
Bernadette Cullen got high on Class As ahead of the hearing while anticipating an "inevitable" prison term for her county lines dealing, then passed her leftovers to a co-defendant once in the courtroom. Her bizarre and brazen actions have now seen her handed further time behind bars.
The same court heard yesterday afternoon, Monday, that the 59-year-old was taken into the dock of courtroom 43 as the sentencing on December 2 2022 was due to begin before security guards escorted her co-defendant, named on charge sheets as Terence Griffiths, to his seat. Paul Blasbery, prosecuting, described how Cullen, of no fixed address but formerly of Birkenhead, then approached him and passed him an item.
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He was removed from the dock as a result, with officers finding that the object was a small lump of crack cocaine weighing 0.03g. Under interview, she stated that she had consumed a quantity of the drug in advance of the hearing but denied having been responsible for giving him the package.
The ECHO previously reported that Cullen and Griffiths were two of 11 men and women locked up for nearly 40 years in connection with a Wirral-based organised crime group involved in "large scale" drug supply. The operation, led by career criminal Carl Mello, advertised crack and heroin for sale on a graft phone known as the "Macca Line" before being infiltrated by undercover police officers.
This saw Cullen, then of Newling Street, given three years and nine months after she was convicted of conspiracy to supply Class A drugs. Griffiths, then aged 36 and of no fixed abode, was sentenced to three years in prison for the same offence while 35-year-old Mello, of Cheapside in Liverpool city centre, received four-and-a-half years.
Cullen has a total of 51 previous convictions for 113 offences dating back to 1980. These include an entry for possession of Class A drugs with intent to supply in 1992 and 12 months for supply a Class C drug in 2006.
Anna Duke, defending, told the court: "She was a drug addict herself, and was essentially supplying so that she could feed her own habit. Just before her sentencing, she had taken some drugs because she knew that the inevitable was going to happen.
"Very foolishly, a very small amount she had left she actually gave to her co-defendant before she was sentenced. She has used her time wisely in custody.
"This is a glaring offence, committed in the face of the court, but it was committed by someone who was a drug addict herself and who was not thinking about the consequences when she made the foolish and clumsy attempt to give drugs to her co-defendant. She has been a model prisoner."
Cullen admitted supplying crack cocaine. Appearing via video link to HMP Drake Hall wearing a beige puffer coat and with her hair tied up in a bun, she was handed an additional 21 months behind bars and replied: "Thank you, your honour."
Sentencing, Recorder Peter Wright KC described her crime as an "egregious act" committed while she was "heavily under the influence". He added: "You will appreciate that the nature of the offence you have committed here has its own extremely serious aggravating factors.
"You are a woman with a most unenviable antecedent history, going all the way back to your juvenile days. The irony is that you were appearing for conspiracy to supply the very type of drug you were handing to your co-defendant.
"This is an offence in which there are certainly mitigating factors – the efforts you have made while in custody to address a long standing drug addiction and that you have sought to rehabilitate yourself and become, in the words of your advocate, a prisoner who is of model behaviour. You may, albeit at a late stage in your life, have realised that there can be a life beyond addiction to drugs."
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