A 39-year-old woman who attempted to mail a package containing cocaine concealed in bundle of Watchtower magazines -a publication of the Jehovah Witness church-is expected to be sentenced on Wednesday.

Patricia Mathews pleaded guilty to the charge of having 29 grammes of cocaine in her possession when she appeared before San Fernando Second Court Magistrate Melville Daniel yesterday.

But her attorney, Ainsley Lucky, told Daniel that while Mathews readily admitted her guilt and did not waste judicial time, she was ’duped’ into being in possession of the drug.

’She got an envelope with the illicit substance with instructions to take it to FedEx,’ Lucky said.

Lucky told the court that Mathews, a domestic worker, was sorry and asked that she be spared a jail term. Daniel asked Mathews if she had ever been to prison.

Mathews, of King’s Wharf, San Fernando, told him she had been jailed about three to five times for narcotic-related offences, with the last occasion being in 2005 when she was ordered to serve 24 months in prison.

The court heard it was at around 11.30 a.m. on Thursday that Mathews went to the TTPost outlet at Carlton Centre, San Fernando, and attempted to mail a sealed, brown envelope to an address in Canada. She was asked by workers there to unseal the envelope and the cocaine was discovered in a sealed plastic bag inside the magazines, and not a Bible as had originally been reported.

PC Amit Deonarine arrived on the scene and arrested Mathews, who was taken to the San Fernando Police Station where she was charged. The value of the cocaine was not disclosed to the court yesterday.

Mathews was remanded in custody for tracing.