By Paul A. Reid, Staff ReporterWESTERN BUREAU:
A MONTEGO Bay court yesterday convicted a British teenager of drug smuggling but faced the dilemma of deciding whether she should go to a male or female prison facility. Eventually the decision was not to imprison her.
Jonathon Featherstone, 18, a hermaphrodite, was born with both male and female genitalia. She is listed as male on her passport, but looks and functions like a female.
The Montego Bay Resident Magistrate's Court gave her a two-year suspended sentence and imposed a $290,000 fine for trying to smuggle about 15.65 kgs (34.5 pounds) of ganja out of the country on March 16, following pleas from his attorney, Morrell Beckford.
Featherstone, dressed in blue jeans and baggy sweat top, appeared to be a small-framed female with shaved eyebrows and highlighted processed hair held in one with a rubber band at the back of the head.
"This proves a difficulty for us," said Mr. Beckford, who questioned whether the penal system could deal with "a case such as this?"
He described the situation as an "unwanted problem for our penal system", asking where his client would be housed.
LEGALLY, FUNCTIONALLY A FEMALE
The attorney said the accused's passport described the holder as male but said since obtaining it, he has been "legally and functionally a female" who "shares male and female characteristics", but "can get pregnant and experiences normal female biological functions."
The court heard that the police had also carried out a "visual examination of the prisoner" to ensure that what they heard was factual.
Beckford said the court should not be concerned with setting precedence, as this type of case would not present itself frequently.
However, The Gleaner in an attempt at clarifying how the system deals with such cases, was told by Commissioner of Corrections, Major Richard Reece, that the prisons could adjust in those special circumstances and were capable of making "appropriate arrangements in keeping with practice overseas" if the convict had been sentenced to prison here.
Major Reece said Featherstone could well be "a new test case" for drug dealers, whom he said might be using a "hybrid, establishing a new modus operandi", in the same way they used terminally ill, handicapped or older people to be couriers.
If the accused had been sent to Corrections, Major Reece said Featherstone would have been put in a single cell under joint supervision of a male and female warder, and would be treated as male and female simultaneously.
He said a medical examination would first be carried out on the prisoner to determine "functionality of the organs, out of an abundance of caution" before anything else is attempted.
Featherstone was arrested at the Sangster International Airport on March 16 after ganja was found in a black and white suitcase she had checked in on a Air Jamaica flight.
The police say that nine packages of vegetable matter weighing 6.58 kg (14.5 lb) were found in the suitcase while another 9.07 kg (20 lb) was found hidden in tins marked as cheese.
She was fined $15,000 or six months for possession, $55,000 or six months for dealing and $220,000 or six months for taking steps to export ganja.
