A teen drug dealer’s attempt to be found not guilty of supplying crack and heroin was likened to a ‘last desperate roll of the dice’.

Rayon Saunders, now 19, claimed he’d found the bag of 50 wraps under a bench outside McDonald’s in Cornmarket Street, Oxford, and put them in his sock thinking they might be cannabis.

The Wolverhampton teen - then just 16 - told jurors at Oxford Crown Court that he’d travelled to the university city by train on July 14, 2019, to see two girls he’d met on Snapchat. They planned to meet at McDonald’s.

The jury, down to 10 after two of their number tested positive for coronavirus halfway through the two-day trial, did not believe his defence - finding him guilty of possession with intent to supply class A drugs.

At the teenager’s sentencing hearing on Thursday morning, Judge Maria Lamb was told that Saunders had been given ‘robust’ advice on the strength of the evidence against him but had chosen to fight the case to trial.

Had he not been found guilty, he would have been released from a ‘substantial’ prison sentence for drug dealing in 2020 in March this year.

Judge Lamb likened the youngster’s position to ‘a last desperate roll of the dice in the hope the jury might acquit’.

The drugs found on Rayon Saunders Picture: CPS

The drugs found on Rayon Saunders Picture: CPS

Sentencing him to 12 months in a young offender’s institution, the judge said: “You will have some time further yet to serve as a consequence of this 12 months detention I have imposed but it won’t be too much longer.

“And I hope that therefore when you come out as you will do, probably sometime this year, you will have learned this lesson. You will be going to college, you will be making a different start in life. At your age, it is certainly not too late and you will become a worthwhile and productive member of our community.”

She warned that if he received a third conviction for supplying class A drugs he faced a minimum sentence of seven years.

“It will be prison big time,” she said.

Earlier, defence barrister Ragveer Chand said his client did not want to find himself in a courtroom again. He planned to go to college on his release and study for a business qualification.

“I’m going to ask you to take a leap of faith this morning,” he said.

“To some it may be regarded as a rather long and fanciful leap but a leap of faith nonetheless, to give this young man some hope that he can put into effect his ambitions, to put into effect the claim that this is the last time he’s going to find himself in this court or any court anywhere in this country.”