South Bank drugs boss Robert Hickman given extra jail time after 'hopeless' appeal to cut sentence fails

A Middlesbrough man caged for his “leading role” in an £800,000 trans-Pennine drugs conspiracy must serve extra time behind bars for mounting a “hopeless” sentence appeal.

Robert Thomas Hickman, 29; and Jason Turnbull, 33, of Thornaby, Jamie Knox, 27, of Oldham, were part of a gang which funnelled hundreds of kilos of class A drugs into Teesside.

Hickman, of Shepherdson Court, South Bank, was caged for 16 years at Teesside Crown Court in May, after he was convicted of conspiracy to supply class A drugs.

Knox, of Oakworth Croft, was jailed for nine years and four months, and Turnbull, of Lulsgate, received 10 years and five months after they admitted the same offence.

Three senior judges at London’s Appeal Court roundly rejected sentence challenges by the trio.

And they took the rare step of ordering Hickman to serve an extra month behind bars for wasting the court’s time.

Judge Peter Collier QC said there were 19 further co-conspirators implicated in the huge plot to flood Teesside with class A drugs.

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More than 100 drug runs were made from North West to North East and the conspiracy ran from January, 2012 to March, 2013.

Police recovered more than 6kg of heroin, worth £690,000, 2.2kg of cocaine, worth £92,965, and 437 grams of crack cocaine, worth £41,201.

However, the overall plot involved the transport of hundreds of kilos of drugs, said Judge Collier.

Hickman, a “prominent Cleveland dealer”, was indentified by the trial judge as having played a “leading role” in the plot.

He was close to the ringleaders and was aware of most of the drug deliveries.

Knox played a “significant role”, having warehoused some of the drugs. Properties connected to him were found to contain substantial quantities of heroin, cocaine and crack cocaine.

Turnbull, also a Cleveland dealer, was also attributed a “significant role” in the drugs ring.

Barristers for all three men insisted their jail terms were excessive and should be cut.

But Judge Collier, sitting with Lord Justice Bean and Mr Justice Stewart, said: “These applications are unarguable”.

Lord Justice Bean said Hickman had been warned in advance that his appeal was “hopeless” and “without merit”.

His bid to reboot his sentence challenge was “unjustified” and the judge ordered that 28 days he had already served would not count when his release date is calculated.