Canada - ~Judge made 'serious errors' in sentencing Hells Angel, appeal court hears

OFF THE WIRE
BY: Keith Fraser
Source: theprovince.com

Federal prosecutors were in court Tuesday appealing a one-year jail sentence handed to a member of the Hells Angels who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to trafficking in large quantities of methamphetamines and cocaine.

Crown counsel Martha Devlin told a three-member panel of the B.C. Court of Appeal that B.C. Supreme Court Justice Peter Leask had made four “serious errors” in principle in his sentencing of Randy Potts.

Devlin noted that the B.C. Court of Appeal had in August more than quadrupled the sentence that Leask had imposed on Potts’ co-accused, John Punko.

The prosecutor said Leask erred in his “piecemeal” approach to sentencing and had failed to give enough weight to denunciation and deterrence.

She said Leask failed to properly apply the case law and wrongly determined that the methamphetamine and cocaine charges should be sentenced concurrently rather than consecutively.

In December 2009, Potts was dealt his one-year sentence after he pleaded guilty to the charges.

He was an “investor” in the scheme to manufacture and distribute meth, providing $14,000 in cash and 16 kilograms of the precursor drug ephedrine in order to produce 8 kilos of meth. He received back $231,500.

For trafficking .85 kilos of cocaine, he received $32,800.

Punko was sentenced to 14 months by Leask, but the B.C. Court of Appeal found that the trial judge had erred and increased his sentence to five years, two months.

Both 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 of the Hells Angels.

kfraser@theprovince.com
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