Derek Achong

Two con­vict­ed drug traf­fick­ers scored a ma­jor le­gal vic­to­ry yes­ter­day af­ter the Court of Ap­peal re­duced their 25-year sen­tences by al­most half.In an oral judg­ment de­liv­ered in the Hall of Jus­tice, a spe­cial five-mem­ber ap­peal pan­el led by Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie said Bar­ry Fran­cis and Roger Hinds should serve a to­tal of 27 years' im­pris­on­ment with hard labour.

While Fran­cis's sen­tence was re­duced to 15 years, he is ex­pect­ed to be re­leased in less than sev­en, as the time he spent in re­mand while await­ing tri­al, and af­ter be­ing con­vict­ed, was de­duct­ed from his sen­tence. Hinds is ex­pect­ed to be re­leased sev­er­al months be­fore his ac­com­plice as al­most six years that he has al­ready spent in prison was al­so de­duct­ed from his ad­just­ed 12-year sen­tence.Both men had grins on their faces as they were es­cort­ed out of the court by po­lice as­signed to the Court and Process Branch.

Each man was ini­tial­ly sen­tenced to the manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tence un­der the Dan­ger­ous Drugs Act, when they were con­vict­ed of traf­fick­ing 1.6 ki­los of mar­i­jua­na in May 2010.The leg­is­la­tion states that some­one con­vict­ed of drug traf­fick­ing is li­able to im­pris­on­ment for a term of 25 years to life, and to a fine of $100,000 or in de­fault an ad­di­tion­al 15 years' im­pris­on­ment.

But in a land­mark judg­ment de­liv­ered two weeks ago, Archie and his col­leagues struck down the statu­to­ry sen­tence, say­ing it was un­law­ful and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al. The oth­er mem­bers of the pan­el were Paula Mae-Weekes, Al­ice Yorke Soo Hon, Pe­ter Ja­madar and Nolan Bereaux.

How the court ruled

In the five-page ex­ec­u­tive sum­ma­ry of the judg­ment, Archie said: "An ac­cused must be pun­ished for the crime he com­mits. But not on­ly must his guilt or in­no­cence be fair­ly con­sid­ered, his pun­ish­ment must al­so be fair­ly ap­plied to the facts and cir­cum­stances of his case."

Archie de­scribed the manda­to­ry sen­tence as "ar­bi­trary and capri­cious," as it did not al­low for ju­di­cial dis­cre­tion in adapt­ing a sen­tence to the ex­act na­ture of the crime.

He al­so said it was op­pres­sive be­cause it was ex­ces­sive and whol­ly dis­pro­por­tion­ate to the ac­tu­al crime.

Le­gal teams

The duo's le­gal team in­clud­ed Jagdeo Singh, Amerelle Fran­cis, Daniel Khan and Ha­sine Shaikh.The Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion (CBA) had been giv­en per­mis­sion by the court to in­ter­vene in the ap­peal and as an in­ter­est­ed par­ty, it pro­vid­ed sub­mis­sions on the sen­tenc­ing is­sue.The CBA's le­gal team in­clud­ed Se­nior Coun­sel Pamela El­der and Sophia Chote and at­tor­neys Ra­jiv Per­sad, Michelle Solomon and Raphael Mor­gan.