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Saturday, January 15, 2011

Canada - Court lengthens sentence for Hells Angel Potts after Crown appeal

OFF THE WIRE
The B.C. Court of Appeal has quadrupled the jail sentence for a Hells Angel who pleaded guilty to trafficking in large quantities of cocaine and methamphetamines.
In December 2009, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Peter Leask handed Randy Potts, a member of the notorious motorcycle gxxg’s East End chapter, a one-year sentence after he pleaded guilty to the charges.
On Friday a three-member panel of the Appeal Court allowed the federal Crown’s appeal of the sentence and increased Potts’ jail time to five years, reduced to four years after giving credit for pre-sentence custody.
In her reasons for judgment, B.C. Court of Appeal Madam Justice Anne Rowles found that Leask had made a number of errors resulting in an unfit sentence for Potts.
The judge said Leask failed to apply the fundamental principle in sentencing, that a sentence must be proportionate to the gravity of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the offender.
She said Potts could not be described as being at the high end of the drug trafficking hiearachy, but his crimes were nonetheless very serious.
Recognition of the seriousness of the meth conspiracy seemed to have been lost by Leask’s adoption of the characterization of Potts as a “low end mope,” she ruled.
“The description does not fit the magnitude of Potts’ criminal misconduct . . . A conspiracy such as this one is a despicable endeavour which causes very substantial harm within society.”
A second error related to Leask’s handling of mitigating factors on sentencing, said Rowles.
Leask’s recognition of the mitigating factors in stepped, successive stages resulted in them overshadowing the important goals of denunciation and deterrence, she said.
“In combination, the two errors to which I have referred resulted in an unfit sentence.”
Potts, who has been on bail, will now have to turn himself in to serve out his time.
In September, the Appeal Court allowed the Crown’s appeal of Leask’s sentencing of John Punko, Potts’ co-accused. Punko, who had received a 14-month jail term by Leask, saw his jail time increase to five years, two months by the Appeal Court, which found the trial judge had made a number of errors.
Court heard that Potts was an “investor” in a scheme to manufacdture and distribute meth, providing $14,000 in cash and 16 kilograms of the precursor drug ephedrine in order to produce eight kilos of meth. He received back $231,500. For trafficking .85 kilos of cocaine, he received $32,800.
Both Potts and Punko had pleaded guilty after Leask dismissed the more serious charge that they had committed their crimes on behalf of or in association with a criminal organization.
That ruling is being appealed as well by the federal Crown.
In addition to the drug convictions, they were earlier found guilty of various weapons-related offences. A jury hearing the weapons case found them not guilty of committing the offences for a criminal organization.
Potts and Punko were arrested in July 2005 as part of the RCMP’s Project E-Pandora crackdown on the East End chapter.
http://www.theprovince.com/opinion/Court+lengthens+sentence+Hells+Angel+Potts+after+Crown+appeal/4110179/story.html