James Sheridan - France

June 06

Update as of March 2007:

In March 2006 James was acquitted.  The prosecution appealed against the court’s decision and in March 2007, James heard that the case against him had been dropped. This is a very rare case of a lorry driver being able to convince the court that he had no involvement in any illegal activity.

James Sheridan is a 61-year old lorry driver from Chingford and has been in the transport business for over 30 years. He and his young Irish co-driver were arrested on 26 January 2004 at a Toll near Lyons on their way home from Spain via Marseilles. Their load was a last minute order from a genuine UK-based firm and consisted of four pallets of paving stones. 610 kg of cannabis resin were found in two of these. The delivery address for the paving stones was genuine and based in Essex. However, the name of the person giving instructions to the transport company, the contact in the Spanish warehouse, and the consignees named on the pallets were all fake.

Both men were arrested; James spent 4 months in prison before being released on bail which was set at €50,000. His co-driver had been released on bail after two weeks. The case was heard on 14 February 2006. The prosecutor asked for a six year sentence for James and two years for his co-driver, together with a fine of €1.2 million. The men were acquitted but the prosecution appealed and this could take another year to come to court, so yet again the outcome is uncertain.

Fair Trial Issues

1. As in so many cases, information was not shared between the British and French authorities, as no request was ever made by the French.
2. Due to the excellent work of the defence lawyer an acquittal was secured, but James was very lucky in that his family was able to afford a privately paid lawyer.