The post British Columbia High Court Deals Blow To Mandatory Minimums appeared first on High Times.
The Appeal Court of British Columbia, the province’s highest, on December 28 upheld a lower court ruling that the minimum two-year prison term for marijuana possession “for purpose of trafficking” under Canada’s Controlled Drugs & Substances Act is unconstitutional. Justice Sunni-Stromberg-Stein dismissed the Crown’s appeal of a 10-month sentence imposed when Phillip Francis McGee pleaded guilty after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police raided his home in Surrey. The ruling is a huge blow to mandatory minimums.
The Ruling
The 2013 raid turned up a grow operation with over 600 plants, according to the Surrey Now-Leader. Under the CDSA, a mandatory two-year term kicks in at 500 plants. It jumps to three years in cases where property belonging to a third party is used—and McGee was indeed renting. But when the case went before Justice Terence Schultes of BC Supreme Court (actually a lower court in the provincial system), he chucked the mandatory minimum, finding that it violates Section 12 the Canadian Charter of Rights & Freedoms, which bars “cruel and unusual punishment.”
The unanimous ruling to uphold this decision by a three-judge panel of the Appeal Court means that no one who faces charges for more than 500 plants in BC will get the two-to-three-year mandatory minimum—unless the ruling is overturned in the Supreme Court of Canada. And, as the local website The Georgia Straight notes, that appears highly unlikely, as the Canadian high court almost never hears cases in which the appellate court ruling was unanimous.
Justice Stromberg-Stein wrote that “McGee has successfully completed his 10-month sentence,” indicating that he will be set free.
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