Teeteta Iereria, a 26-year-old cruise-ship cleaner from Kiribati, was sentenced to five years in jail for importing heroin and cannabis into Bermuda.[1] She is single, with two daughters aged five and seven, and had faced a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.[1] She pleaded guilty to importation of cannabis and diamorphine.[1]
On Friday 6 October, plain-clothes officers from the Narcotics Cruise Ship Enforcement Team were on duty at Kings Wharf, Dockyard, as passengers and crew left the cruise ship Norwegian Spirit.[1] The ship had arrived in Bermuda that morning, and one officer saw Iereria acting suspiciously as she disembarked.[1] Officers followed her into the Calypso clothing store in the Clock Tower Mall and detained her for a search under the Misuse of Drugs Act.[1] She ran out of the mall, officers chased and caught her a short distance away, and she struggled until they subdued her.[1]
After her arrest she was taken to Somerset Police Station, where she said she had no money, only drugs, and that she believed the packages around her waist were weed.[1] Officers found eight packages on her person, seven containing cannabis and one containing heroin.[1] The Crown said tests found 1,577 grams of cannabis, with a street value of $78,850, and just over 60 grams of heroin, with a street value of $232,220.[1] The Royal Gazette reported that the cannabis and heroin together were valued at more than $311,000.[1]
Chief Justice Richard Ground sent her to prison after the court heard that she had given assistance to the police.[1] The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council later recorded that her five-year sentence was reduced on appeal to two years under section 27E of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1972, in recognition of her testimony against a former co-defendant.[2]