DRUG DEALER CALLED VICTIM OF DOUBLE STANDARD

A woman handed a three-year sentence for possessing $110 worth of cocaine
for the purpose of trafficking on Vancouver Island would have got off with
only a $500 fine if she had been arrested at Hastings and Main in
Vancouver, three appeal court judges were told yesterday.

Lawyer Bert King argued the three-year sentence was too harsh for his
client, Thuy Bui, a 33-year-old single mother living in Nanaimo. She has
three children under the age of 14.

King suggested the trial judge misunderstood the trial evidence and should
have sentenced Bui to 18 months.

The lawyer did acknowledge that Bui was serving a 15-month conditional
sentence for trafficking cocaine and heroin in Campbell River when she was
arrested again with $110 worth of cocaine in her Campbell River home.

But he urged the court to substitute a conditional sentence of two years
less a day, which would allow Bui to stay home to look after her children.

The appeal court panel - Justices Mary Newbury, Mary Saunders and Catherine
Ryan - unanimously agreed with King and granted a conditional sentence of
two years less a day.

The court also imposed several conditions on the sentence, which Bui will
serve at home: that she reside solely with her children, not leave her home
between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. each day, and allow a search of her residence
without notice twice a month between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m.

Federal prosecutor Valerie Hartney had opposed the application for a
sentence reduction, noting that when police busted Bui with cocaine a
second time, officers said she was flushing drugs down the toilet when they
arrived with a search warrant.

She added that a plainclothes police officer of Asian descent answered the
door five times during the search of Bui's home and found men wanting to
buy cocaine.

The prosecutor also pointed out that police found 39 marijuana plant
seedlings in the trunk of Bui's car and she is still facing trial in
connection with that matter.

Hartney said the Supreme Court of Canada has said the appeal courts should
be hesitant to interfere with a trial judge's position. She noted the
provincial court judge in Campbell River heard evidence that Bui's husband
is a convicted drug dealer.

King told the court that Bui met her husband, Thung Vu, 48, while escaping
on a boat from Vietnam. They spent two years in a Hong Kong refugee camp,
where their first child was born, before coming to Canada in 1989, the
lawyer said.

The court was told that Bui turned to drug dealing to supplement her
welfare cheques. She was first busted in 1998 and given a 15-month
conditional sentence after pleading guilty. Near the end of her sentence,
she was busted again.