AN Old Town man caught peddling ecstasy in the Brunel Rooms has been jailed for four years by a judge.

David Marshall claimed he had found the bag of 86 tablets in a pub while on a night out in August 2003 and said that he was not going to sell them on.

But a jury at Swindon Crown Court didn't believe his story and found the 22-year-old guilty at the end of a trial.

Marshall, who had denied the charges, was convicted of possessing the drugs with intent to supply and supplying a single tablet to a friend.

Both offences related to the night of August 7, 2003, when he was caught with the pills in the town centre club.

Richard Tutt, defending, said that there was no evidence that his client had lived an extravagant lifestyle on profits from drug dealing.

A police report said that the drugs had a street value of about £230, he said, so there was not a huge profit to be made.

He said Marshall, of Western Street, was an intelligent man who had left school with a number of GCSEs and two A-levels.

At that stage his parents emigrated to Spain but he continued to live in Swindon with his brother and completed a foundation course at Swindon College.

He then went to the University of Bath and had completed his first year when he was arrested for these offences.

But, tragically, at the end of that year his brother died suddenly as a result of diabetes, which had not previously been diagnosed.

After that he said his client left the education system and got a job as an assistant manager of a clothes shop in the town.

Jailing him, Judge Charles Wade said: "The jury found you guilty of possession of this not insignificant number of ecstasy tablets with intent to supply and of supplying a single ecstasy to an acquaintance or friend inside the public house. So the jury clearly found you guilty in the context of the pub and club scene in Swindon as evidenced by your supplying that day."

He added: "It is not for me to decide whether you found them in the pub as you said or took them at an earlier stage.

"What they clearly did find was that you had them in your possession that day with the intent of supplying to others."

He said that it was because of the activities of people like him in the county's pubs and clubs that the drug problem existed.

He also ordered that he forfeit £167.66 in cash found on him at the time and that the drugs should be destroyed.

Jamie Hill