Pubdate: Sun, 21 May 2006
Source: Kelowna Capital News (CN BC)
Copyright: 2006, West Partners Publishing Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.kelownacapnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1294
Author: Marshall Jones

JUDGES CAN FOLLOW EXAMPLE OF STIFFER DRUG SENTENCES

It took everyone by surprise when Kelowna Provincial Court judge Vince
Hogan sentenced a woman to four years in jail for selling .8 grams of
cocaine.

It seemed unusually harsh for a court system that has recognized that
drug users become drug dealers to feed their habits.

Tracy D. Gibbon cried through the video screen when she appeared in
Kelowna last October.

She was clearly expecting either the year her lawyer requested or the
16 months requested by the Crown.

But Hogan said Gibbon's method of selling drugs stood her apart from
other desperate addicts. She was caught in a notorious drug house, "a
commercial, sophisticated commercial distribution network in which she
is taking part."

"Now we have enough pitiful cases of the individual trafficker on the
street, peddling at the ground level, but here it is simply the wide
scale destruction of the community being peddled out of a residence in
the downtown."

He said he knew she wasn't the mastermind behind the operation, but
that she was playing an active role in that destruction and
"poisoning" of the community.

The B.C. Court of Appeal said this was ample reason for the longer
sentence. Gibbon had a long list of small offences common to drug
addicts-breaches, property, prostitution-spread over 20 years and had
clearly failed at all attempts to rehabilitate herself.

The judges at B.C.'s top court recognized that the sentence was far in
excess of sentences for trafficking in similarly small amounts, so
they fell behind Hogan's finding that she was more than a bit part in
the drug trade.

"He concluded that an aspect of this sentence should communicate the
values of those who live in Kelowna, who abhor the harm of drug
trafficking in their community.

"It is clear from his reasons that (Hogan) decided that the street
trafficking range of sentencing was inappropriate for this offence
given the existing conditions in his community.He decided that the
offence committed by Ms. Gibbon was so serious that he ought to look
beyond the range given to him," the appeals court said.

Federal Crown prosecutor Murray Ross, who prosecuted the case, says
the backing by the court of appeal recognizes the greater harm caused
in a drug or crack house.

He expects it will be used often in the province's courts to seek
stiffer sentences for anyone selling drugs out of a crack house. 
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