APPEALS COURT REJECTS RACISM ARGUMENT

TORONTO - The Ontario Court of Appeal has dismissed arguments that poor
black women from the Caribbean who attempt to smuggle cocaine into Canada
should escape jail time because of their race, gender and financial
circumstances.

The Court of Appeal rejected the findings in Superior Court rulings in
Brampton that imposed conditional sentences on three single mothers who
acted as drug mules and attempted to smuggle cocaine on flights from
Jamaica to Lester B. Pearson International Airport.

The Superior Court judges ruled the women were victims of systemic racial
and gender bias that should be considered in sentencing.

Aboriginal people have been identified by the courts as a group whose
social background is relevant in sentencing. However, the appeal court said
these principles should not necessarily apply to black women. "There was no
evidence in the mass of material adduced in these proceedings to suggest
that poor black women share a cultural perspective with respect to
punishment that is akin to the aboriginal perspective," said Judge David
Doherty, who wrote the unanimous Court of Appeal decision on behalf of
Justices Dennis O'Connor and Eileen Gillese.

The federal Department of Justice appealed the Superior Court rulings
because it argued the sentences would open the floodgates for traffickers
to use poor women to smuggle cocaine if the defendants did not spend time
in custody.

The minimum sentence for relatively small amounts of cocaine smuggled into
the country should be two years in jail unless there are "extraordinary
mitigating factors," Judge Doherty concluded.

Two of the defendants, Marsha Hamilton and Donna Mason, received
conditional sentences of between 20 and 24 months, including periods of
house arrest, after a joint hearing before Justice Casey Hill (the cases
were combined for sentencing). Ms. Hamilton and Ms. Mason were convicted of
separately attempting to smuggle drugs by swallowing pellets of cocaine.
The street value of the cocaine ranged from $35,000 to $45,000 in each case.

Justice Nancy Mossip followed Judge Hill's reasoning and imposed a two-year
conditional sentence in March, 2003, on Tracy-Ann Spencer. The 26-year-old
single mother of two, who came to Canada from Jamaica at the age of 16, was
convicted of attempting to conceal cocaine with a top street value of about
$75,000 in a false-bottomed suitcase.

The three women were either first offenders or had minor criminal records.
None of the defendants received significant compensation for acting as drug
couriers. The Crown was asking for sentences of between two to five years
in prison.

Judge Hill said during the sentencing hearing that he was "struck by the
number of single mothers, black women, who have appeared before me," during
his nine years as a judge in Brampton. "These individuals, highly
dispensable throwaways of elusive overseers, live in the despair of poverty
- -- single mothers and subjects of systemic racism," said the judge, who was
formerly a senior prosecutor in Ontario. "A sentencing proceeding is not
the forum in which to right perceived societal wrongs," wrote Judge Doherty
in the appeal court ruling.

The appeal court said it would not order Ms. Hamilton and Ms. Mason to
spend time in jail because their conditional sentences are almost over,
although it stressed that the original sentence was too lenient.

Ms. Spencer was ordered to serve a 20-month jail sentence in addition to
her conditional sentence because she attempted to import a greater quantity
of cocaine.