OFF THE WIRE
For the second time this year, the B.C. Court of Appeal has set aside a judgment by B.C. Supreme Court Justice Peter Leask involving the Hells Angels.
In a written judgement released Thursday by the Court of Appeal, Hells Angel member John Punko was given a sentence more than four times the length of an original 14-month imprisonment ordered by Leask in March.
The previous December, Punko and another Hells Angel member, Randy Potts, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to trafficking in multi-kilograms of methamphetamines and large amounts of cocaine.
Federal prosecutors appealed Leask’s ruling after he sentenced Punko to 14 months’ jail and Randy Potts to a year in custody.
The Crown had sought a 16-year sentence for Punko and a 12-year sentence for Potts.
The three appeal judges set aside the 14-month term and sentenced Punko to eight years, which, after a 34-month credit for time served in jail, means he will serve a further five years and two months.
“In my opinion, the sentencing judge made three errors in principle that resulted in Mr. Punko’s 14-month sentence being demonstrably unfit,” wrote Justice David Tysoe in the 2-1 majority ruling.
Tysoe ruled that Leask had erred in determining an appropriate sentence for the two drug offences by treating the involvement of a police agent as justifying a reduced sentence, and in ruling that the sentences for the meth and cocaine offences should be served concurrently.
In his reasons, dissenting Justice Kenneth Smith, who recommended upgrading Punko’s sentence to only 26 months on the methamphetamine charge, said that the harm caused by substances such as methamphetamine “to the basic health and life of people in the community” demanded that courts impose sentences that “denounce and deter.”
Police agent Michael Plante infiltrated the motorcycle club during the RCMP’s Project E-Pandora investigation of the East End chapter of the Hells Angels.
In his original sentence, Leask said Plante did not act unlawfully and that his conduct was approved by police, but he said the fact that Plante supplied Punko and Potts with the painkilling drug Percocets was a mitigating factor. He also treated the fact that they were not involved in meth-trafficking prior to meeting the police officer as a mitigating factor.
The appeal judges ruled there was no conduct on Plante’s part that would justify reduced sentences for Punko.
The judges ruled that the police attempt to infiltrate the organization “would have been futile unless their agent participated in the criminal activities engaged in by other members of the organization.”
Justice Tysoe said that, in his view, “a right-thinking Canadian would accept that such tactics are necessary” to investigate organizations believed to be criminal.
In March, the B.C. Court of Appeal overturned another ruling by Leask after he acquitted alleged Hells Angel associate Nima Ghavami of drug-trafficking charges.
Leask found that there was an unreasonable delay in Ghavani’s case going to trial. A new trial was ordered after the appeal court found Leask had erred.
Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/news/Keeping+Punkos+street+Hells+Angel+sentence+upped/3364848/story.html#ixzz0vseHN6pE
