'HARSH' PENALTY FOR GROW HOUSE DEALER

A Windsor Superior Court judge said he is putting drug traffickers on
notice that incarceration will be the price for anyone setting up
marijuana grow houses in residential areas.

"Jail ... is a definite deterrent," Justice Joseph Quinn said Friday
in sentencing Trung Kien Ha to 18 months in prison for converting a
South Windsor home into a "sophisticated grow operation" with a
bypassed hydro meter.

Crown attorney Richard Pollock, who had argued for a 21-month jail
term, said it was one of the harshest sentences ever meted out
locally for such an offence to a perpetrator with an otherwise
spotless record. Defence lawyer Mark Kramer had sought a sentence of
house arrest for the 34-year-old father of two young daughters.

Ha was convicted following a six-day trial in March for his
connection to the largest marijuana bust in the city's history, when
police raided 11 homes and apartments in June 2004. Seven people were
arrested and police seized an estimated $5.5 million in pot, $10,000
in cash and growing equipment worth approximately $100,000.

Ha was fingered as the principal culprit behind a 480-plant grow in a
home owned by his father in the 3900-block of Acorn Crescent. A
marijuana production and trafficking trial targeting his mother and
another relative -- involving two other grow houses -- starts June
26, while a third court action involving more homes converted to grow
houses commences Sept. 11, with Ha's brother and wife being the accused.

While all those arrested in the co-ordinated raids two years ago are
related by blood or marriage, the prosecution has split up the legal
actions in order to simplify the process. Quinn said he could only
take the Acorn Crescent facts into account in sentencing Ha.

Ha was given concurrent 18-month sentences for separate production
and trafficking convictions, as well as a three-month concurrent term
for theft of hydro. After his jail time, Ha will be put on probation
for eight months and be prohibited from possessing weapons for 10 years.

The judge said Ha was never able to explain how he owned houses in
Toronto and LaSalle and was able to pay $40,000 for a Honda Odyssey
just months before his 2004 arrest, despite not having worked since
2001. Another "troubling factor," said Quinn, was that Ha expressed
no remorse for his crime. Quinn ordered Ha to repay Enwin Utilities
$7,282.04 in restitution for stolen power.

The judge expressed concern with the "flourishing" number of grow ops
in Essex County but said offering jail time will have the
perpetrators "weighing the consequences" more of getting caught.