Costs of breaking bad | iNFOnews | Thompson-Okanagan's News Source
Subscribe

Would you like to subscribe to our newsletter?

Current Conditions Mostly Cloudy  1.5°C

Kamloops News

Costs of breaking bad

NEW LEGISLATION WOULD HAVE INCARCERATED MAN HAD CRIMES NOT BEEN COMMITTED EARLIER

KAMLOOPS - A Kamloops man will spend the next year of his life with a strict home curfew, a decision that comes after being caught trafficking drugs when he was 22 — and before the laws tightened up.

Jeff Carpenter, 25, was busted selling 'an 80' — $80 of cocaine — to an undercover officer twice in the same day back in 2010.

On July 17, an undercover officer called Carpenter and arranged to meet in front of Coopers Foods in downtown Kamloops before purchasing .6 grams of cocaine from him.

Later that same day, the officer arranged to meet him again, this time at the North Kamloops Wendy's restaurant, purchasing .9 grams of cocaine from Carpenter before the arrest was made.

Today Carpenter was sentenced after pleading guilty to two trafficking charges and was handed a one-year conditional sentence—a jail sentence served in the community under house arrest.

Carpenter's lawyer, Chris Thompson, said Carpenter used narcotics as a 22-year-old and was involved in the drug world, but said it lasted for less than a month, and that he has since stayed out of trouble — something reflected in his lack of a criminal record.

He has been working as a stucco labourer and is set to enter TRU in the welding trades program. He lives with a common-law girlfriend.

"I want to go to school and carry on with my life," Carpenter said today in court before being sentenced.

They noted in court that had he committed the crime today, he would have faced a mandatory minimum sentence, likely at least two years. Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives imposed the mandatory minimum sentences in 2012.

Carpenter is required to remain at his residence from 10 p.m. until 6 a.m.

To contact a reporter for this story, email: jwallace@infotelnews.ca, call: (250) 319-7494 or tweet: @jess__wallace.

News from © iNFOnews, 2013
iNFOnews

  • Popular kelowna News
View Site in: Desktop | Mobile