APPEAL COURT TAKES AWAY POT TRAFFICKER'S HOUSE

He lost his weed and his freedom, and now a Grand Lake property owner
has lost his home.

The Nova Scotia Court of Appeal ruled Friday that a judge erred when
he decided not to forfeit Rady Siek's home to the Crown in a marijuana
cultivation case.

In October 2005, Mr. Siek, formerly of Brookhill Drive, pleaded guilty
to producing marijuana, possessing more than three kilograms of
marijuana for the purpose of trafficking and fraudulently diverting
$5,500 worth of electricity from Nova Scotia Power.

In February 2006, Judge D. William MacDonald sentenced Mr. Siek, then
38, to two years in prison and ordered that certain personal property,
including lights and shields, exhaust fans, electrical panels, growing
nutrients and growing mix, be forfeited.

Judge MacDonald dismissed the Crown's application for forfeiture of
Mr. Siek's home, saying it would be disproportionate to the offence.

On Dec. 7, the Crown appealed.

When RCMP searched Mr. Siek's single-storey home in 2004, officers
discovered a marijuana growing operation.

In total, 518 plants were found. If sold by the gram, the drug could
have yielded $435,000 to $870,000, an RCMP corporal said in a report
to the court.

The growing equipment inside the home was worth about $20,000, not
counting the cost of the wiring, timers, pots, soil, nutrients and
labour.

At the forfeiture hearing last May, Mr. Siek testified that he was
working for an airline at the Toronto airport when he came to Nova
Scotia on vacation. He bought the Grand Lake property in 2004. He did
not get a job transfer and continued to live and work full time in
Toronto, but he travelled to Nova Scotia often.

Mr. Siek told the court he did not make any money from the growing
operation. He said he intended to cultivate the marijuana for six to
eight months, one or two crops, and then close down.

His one crop of 10 kilograms was not sold because he did not know
where to sell it. He said he planned to apply the profits to the
property to reduce his mortgage payments.

Police seized the crop.

The judge commented that Mr. Siek wasn't a sophisticated criminal,
that his work history and life history indicated that he had been
employed and a contributing member of Canadian society and that he
used his earnings from his airline job to buy the home.

Judge MacDonald also noted that Mr. Siek did not make any profit
because police seized his first crop. The first-time offender also
made full restitution to Nova Scotia Power.

In Friday's Appeal Court decision ordering that the home be forfeited,
Justices Linda Lee Oland, Elizabeth Roscoe and Jill Hamilton said the
sentence imposed was not a valid consideration.

"And, by overemphasizing the lack of profit and the loss of equity
obtained by legal means, and by failing to consider the nature and
gravity of the offence and other circumstances surrounding its
commission, the judge erred," Justice Oland wrote for the court.