A 24-year-old high-school graduate from a middle-class home will spend weekends in jail after pleading guilty to two counts of trafficking in crack cocaine.
Jesse Secord, 24, was given a 60-day jail sentence to be served on weekends at a sentence hearing Friday (Oct. 3) in B.C. Supreme Court.
The Crown asked for a sentence of six to nine months in jail while defence lawyer Kevin Walker argued for a suspended sentence.
A conditional sentence order — typically in the form of house arrest or a curfew — is no longer available for drug trafficking offences following changes brought in by the federal Conservative government.
Secord has no criminal record.
He pleaded guilty to selling crack cocaine worth $40 to undercover police posing as users on two separate occasions in September last year.
The Crown said it was a dial-a-dope operation whereby users call a cell phone to request delivery of drugs.
In addition to pleading guilty, Secord stopped dealing and sought drug rehab help before he knew he was targeted in the RCMP sting.
“He made a decision before he was charged to stop offending,” Hyslop said.
But the B.C. Supreme Court justice added that a suspended sentence, essentially probation conditions, is too light a penalty for a dial-a-dope operations, which target vulnerable addicts and give them easy access to hard drugs.
Walker said Secord and his brother, who grew up in a middle-class home, began experimenting with hard drugs at 15.
Both became addicts.
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