Struck-off Nurse breaches suspended sentence

Sunday 11 November 2018

A nurse who was struck-off last year for forging prescriptions for herself has found herself in front of Guernsey's courts again.

On August 7, 60-year-old Diane Poole was caught swigging from a bottle of vodka while sat in her car at the Portinfer Car Park in the Vale, and when she was tested for alcohol, she was nearly three times over the limit.

She will now serve four months behind bars, as Judge Graeme McKerrell said he was left no choice but to activate the suspended sentence hanging over the defendant's head, as the law says he must do - but he still acted with mercy he said, by revoking that former sentence and replacing it with four months in prison.  Poole also received one month for the drink driving offence she committed in August, to be served concurrently with the four months, and a two and a half year driving ban.

When the former nurse appeared in court in March last year, she was charged with forging more than 70 prescriptions to give herself painkillers, and possession of those class C drugs. She had used them to deal with her own health problems since 2011, but was sentenced to a 12 month suspended sentence, a £2,000 fine and a 140 hour community service order. 

This week the Magistrate's Court heard how the defendant was caught in the act of drinking after a member of the public observed her drinking the vodka in the carpark for over 30 minutes and decided to inform the authorities. When they arrived to speak to her, she gave the police officer a note, which effectively said she knew she was drinking in a car, but did not intend to drive, and had put the car keys on the passenger seat - where the police officer found them.

The court heard Poole had retreated to the carpark after an argument with her husband - she had gone to a supermarket to buy some food and the vodka, before going to drink it. Her plan following drinking the vodka was to wait for her husband to come and find her to take her home, but she quickly found her phone was out of battery, so was resigned to sleeping in the car.

The defendant was found in a carpark at Portinfer drinking a bottle of vodka. She had put the keys on the passenger seat to try and prove she was not going to drive.

Poole, according to her GP, is an alcoholic, and has also been struggling with the shame of her previous convictions. Her defence advocate argued it was clear this shame indicated his client had taken on board what Judge McKerrell has said when sentencing her last year, and also that that the note she wrote indicated she did not want to do anything wrong. But Judge McKerrell said the note, if anything, showed Poole knew she could be breaking the law, and when assessing whether it was right to activate her suspended sentence, said he was not satisfied she had made her best efforts to access all of the help that was available to her. 

"I found your explanation difficult to understand because it appears you knew that you were at risk of committing an offence with the note you had written," he said, "I cannot exclude the idea that you would have driven, so I have to sentence you on that basis.

"You are in breach of a suspended sentence that I imposed, that led to you being struck off as a nurse. You were fortunate to receive such a sentence at the time, because they were certainly serious enough offences to warrant immediate imprisonment.

"The suspended sentence law is quite clear, I am statutorily bound to activate it unless it would be unjust. So it seems to me the question I have to ask myself is if I am not going to activate that suspended sentence, how am I within the law. I do consider I have no alternative to activating it, but I will show considerable mercy."

When Poole was sentenced by Judge McKerrell in 2017, she received a 12 month suspended sentence, which he replaced yesterday with just a four month one.