An­na-Lisa Paul

A com­put­er tech­ni­cian from West­moor­ings whose fe­male friend re­port­ed him to the po­lice for mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion fol­low­ing an ar­gu­ment, was yes­ter­day fined $500 or in de­fault serve three months hard labour.

How­ev­er, the sen­tence hand­ed down on Fred­er­ick Nicholas Stampfli of Beach­wood Dri­ve, Good­wood Gar­dens, Glen­coe, will be sus­pend­ed up­on the com­ple­tion of 80 hours of com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice. The com­mu­ni­ty ser­viced is to be com­plet­ed with­in the next six months. Stampfli, 25, was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Criston Williams when he ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Deb­by-Ann Bas­saw-Nan­coo in the Port-of-Spain Tenth Court yes­ter­day.

Stampfli was ar­rest­ed at his home around 3.15 am on March 13, af­ter PC Mar­lon Lin­ton of the Care­nage Po­lice Sta­tion ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant at his home and found 1.1 grammes of mar­i­jua­na hid­den in­side a Cheese Ritz snack cup.Hold­ing aloft the ex­hib­it yes­ter­day, the pros­e­cu­tor demon­strat­ed to the court, that the bot­tom of the cup had been mod­i­fied to make a hol­low com­part­ment in which the drugs had been con­cealed.

The con­tain­er was found in Stampfli's bed­room.With no pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions or pend­ing mat­ters, Williams ar­gued that his client was a com­put­er tech­ni­cian whose as­pi­ra­tions in­clud­ed stud­ies abroad, and that a con­vic­tion would ham­per his abil­i­ty to trav­el freely.Williams said Stampfli had strong fam­i­ly ties, ev­i­denced by his fa­ther's pres­ence in court yes­ter­day.The mag­is­trate lat­er con­sid­ered Stampfli's guilty plea, the amount of nar­cotics and his pre­vi­ous clean record be­fore rul­ing.