"The scourge of cannabis growing is being done in every South Yorkshire township,' warns Sheffield judge

Judge Michael Slater made the comments during a sentencing hearing for defendant, Rogers Jaho, who previously admitted a charge of production of cannabis, relating to an operation worth between £35,600 and £89,000 discovered at a property in Swaledale Road, Millhouses, Sheffield.

“You said in interview, and in the pre-sentence report, that you didn’t realise the seriousness of what you were doing. Well, you certainly do now,” the judge said.

“The growing of cannabis in South Yorkshire is simply a scourge. It is being done in every major town, and township, throughout the county,” Judge Slater told Jaho during a hearing held at Sheffield Crown Court on May 16, 2023.

He went on to say ‘sophisticated’ cannabis operations – like the one Jaho, aged 33, was tasked with maintaining – often result in violence being brought to communities in Sheffield, and the rest of South Yorkshire, due to conflicts between those who facilitate such illegal grows of the Class B drug, and rival sellers who ‘seek to take their operations away’.

Judge Slater continued: “Without people like you, it couldn’t happen, because people who own grow operations seek to distance themselves from apprehension. And the way they do it, is by recruiting people like you.”

Prosecuting barrister, Neil Coxon, told the court that police officers executed a search warrant at the Millhouses property on January 26, 2021, and found the ‘evidence of production of cannabis,’ which was being grown in ‘three bedrooms and an attic or loft area’.

“The various plants, in total there were 163 plants – 74 mature plants, and 89 immature plants – had a potential yield of 9 kilograms, 8.97 kilograms, with a potential value of between £36,500 and £89,000,” Mr Coxon said.

He added that officers also discovered cash to the value of £1,575 in the property, along with two mobile telephones, although no ‘incriminating evidence’ was found on the phones.

Jaho provided an account in his police interview, which has also been reiterated in his basis of plea that was accepted by the prosecution, in which he accepted being ‘involved with the production of cannabis,’ the court heard. The defendant said that he was recruited to the operation in Sheffield when he was living in London and experiencing hard times, after losing his job in a casino due to the Covid pandemic, the court heard.

Jaho stated that he was offered £3,000 for working on the cannabis operation as a custodian for a period of three months.

When Judge Slater asked Mr Coxon why it has taken some two years, four months, for the case to be brought to court, despite Jaho being arrested on the day of the search warrant, he responded by saying the police analysis of the evidence found at the scene – including the phones – took nine months.

He said prosecutors subsequently asked for further information on the case in November 2021, and took the decision to bring charges in December of that year. Police did not issue a postal requisition informing Jaho he was being charged until March 2022, and Jaho did not attend a court hearing in May 2022, due to not receiving the postal requisition.

Laura Jeffrey, defending Jaho, of Millais Road, London, said his role in the cannabis operation had been ‘limited,’ adding that he had ‘no knowledge of those further up the chain’.

“This very much was an act that was out of character,” Ms Jeffrey told the court, adding that the author of his pre-sentence report had deemed him to pose a low-risk of re-offending.

Responding to Jaho’s mitigation, Judge Slater said the defendant had not become part of the operation ‘under any compulsion,’ and stood to make ‘a significant amount of money’ through his involvement in it.

However, Judge Slater added that he had just been persuaded to suspend Jaho’s custodial sentence of 14 months for two years due to the amount of time it had taken for the case to reach court – and the fact he had not re-offended in the interim. He also ordered Jaho to complete 220 hours of unpaid work.

“You’ve had a very narrow escape,” Judge Slater told Jaho.