Image Credit: FILE PHOTO
October 14, 2016 - 4:37 PM
KAMLOOPS - It's been months since a Kamloops dial-a-dope manager avoided jail time and a Crown appeal has led to a shorter conditional sentence for the man.
Steven Lloyd Currie, 30, was originally given a two-year conditional sentence order and a probationary term in which he must complete 500 hours of community service for conspiracy to traffic cocaine. Crown had appealed the sentence because under the Criminal Code, the court is only allowed to make conditional sentence orders for sentences of less than two years.
"The sentence was illegal," the B.C. Court of Appeal decision reads.
The court is also not allowed to give more than 240 hours of community service for a probation order. The decision said the sentence was unfit and a low-end jail sentence should have been imposed.
"However, in the exceptional circumstances of this case, the interests of justice are best served by allowing the respondent to serve out his conditional sentence in the community where he has made significant rehabilitative strides," appeal court Judge Gregory Fitch said.
Crown's appeal was partly granted, although it was seeking a four-year jail sentence. The term of the conditional sentence order has been reduced by one day and the probation term's community service hours have been reduced to 240.
Another 240 hours have been added to the conditional sentence.
Between April and October of 2012, Currie managed a dial-a-dope ring in Kamloops that distributed street-level quantities of cocaine throughout the city.
The decision said although Crown tried to prove the sentence was unfit, they didn't succeed and Currie has been "successful" in rehabilitating himself.
"Substituting the sentence that ought to have been imposed at this late stage risks undermining the extraordinary rehabilitative steps Mr. Currie has taken since the commission of this offence," Fitch said in his decision.
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