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Hill gets seven years for importing drugs

Acting Puisne Judge Archibald Warner was harsher than the Crown expected yesterday when he sentenced 34-year-old Luke Albert Hill to seven years in jail for three convictions related to drug importation.

On Wednesday, a jury unanimously found Hill guilty of importing 37.1 grams, or $11,550 worth, of 46 percent pure cocaine via Federal Express in February, 1999. They also convicted him of possession of the drug with intent to supply and handling the drug with intent to supply.

Yesterday Mr. Justice Warner handed down concurrent seven-year sentences for all three charges.

Crown counsel Dorian Taylor had suggested a six-year term for Hill while defence lawyer Richard Hector asked Mr. Justice Warner to be lenient with his client and to commit him to jail for only three to four years.

According to a Police surveillance team, Hill asked Nneka Powell to collect a FedEx Letter envelope containing drugs from the company's office, then on Par-La-Ville Road. She collected the package and gave it to Hill, who later took it home. When officers entered his residence on Cottage Hill, Hamilton Parish, they heard a toilet flushing and never recovered the control sample they had put in a dummy package that morning. Hill denied receiving a package.

Although Ms Powell told the court she had collected packages for Hill several times before he was caught, Hill's record contained only two minor charges dating back to the mid-1980s, including stealing bicycle parts and receiving a stolen engine; both convictions resulted in fines.

The Crown also presented a document from the Federal Bureau of Investigation which said Hill was convicted of possessing marijuana with intent to supply in Clinton, Massachusetts, in 1989. He was given a three- to five-year prison sentence in 1990, but was deported to Bermuda two months later.

Mr. Hector objected to the presentation of the FBI document in court, saying that it was unfair to his client as its authenticity was not verified.

But after some heated discourse between the lawyer and the judge, Mr. Justice Warner told him that the document was not evidence, only information, and needed only to be proved if the defendant denied the charges.

After consulting with Mr. Hector, Hill did exactly that.

But the Crown could not prove that he was convicted and Acting Justice Warner did not take the alleged crimes into consideration in sentencing.

Mr. Hector also disputed that the drug imported was crack, which Mr. Justice Warner indicated would carry a higher sentence than if cocaine had been imported.

"It is not clear to me from the Government analyst's certificate that this is crack cocaine," he told the court. "It says it was present as cocaine freebase. What does that mean?"

Mr. Justice Warner told him that freebase cocaine is known colloquially as crack.

Before he had even begun to write his decision, Mr. Justice Warner said: "I don't think six years is the tariff and I don't think three to four years is the tariff either."

But he agreed with Mr. Taylor when he said Hill had taken advantage of a "simple-minded and intellectually weak person" when he asked Ms Powell to collect the package for him.

Mr. Taylor said the court needed to protect people like Ms Powell from people like Hill.

Mr. Hector said his client had a clean record and the quantity of drugs he imported was relatively small. He also noted that Hill had chosen to be tried in Supreme Court rather than Magistrates' Court, and if his case had been heard by a Magistrate rather than a jury, the maximum sentence would have been five years.

Mr. Justice Warner said: "The defendant has shown no remorse and there are few mitigating factors."

He took into consideration a precedent which said "very little" consideration should be given to the defendant's age and the absence of a previous record in a drugs case such as this one.