[Sativa]

A solicitor has been jailed for 15 months for smuggling cannabis in her bra for a client in custody.

Daniela Scotece, of Sheridan Way, Nottingham, tried to smuggle £15-worth of the drug in her underwear.

The 31-year-old admitted a charge of possessing the drug with intent to supply at an earlier hearing at Derby Crown Court.

Scotece hid it as she went to meet Emmanuel Samuels, 22, at Nottingham Magistrates' Court on 31 August 2006.

Samuels, from St Ann's in Nottingham, is currently serving a prison sentence for another drugs offence and has admitted aiding, abetting, counselling and procuring Scotece to possess the cannabis with intent to supply.

A calls by the convicted drug dealer to Scotece was picked up by authorities monitoring calls at Leicester Prison last August.

He gave her the message, "Make sure my daughter is wrapped up tight when you take her to bed."

A few days later, when his solicitor visited him in custody at Bridewell police suite at Nottingham Magistrates Court, a sniffer dog detected drugs - and Scotece was subsequently found to be carrying cannabis hidden in her bra.

Her defence said she had been under pressure to supply the drugs and was in an abusive relationship at the time.

However, Judge Andrew Hamilton said people who took drugs into prison must expect a jail sentence themselves.

He said this case was made worse by the fact Scotece was a solicitor and said she had brought the whole legal profession into disrepute.

Scotece has since lost her job as result of the case and representatives from the Nottingham firm of solicitors where she had worked were in court to see her sentenced.

"We really had no conception that there was anything of this nature afoot," said Digby Johnson of the Johnson Partnership.

"When I say that I don't just mean the issue of taking the drugs into the cell block but some of the things that were happening in Daniela's life that have come to light since."


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