TWO DENIED COMMUNITY SENTENCES

Two men convicted in a large-scale drug trafficking conspiracy are not
candidates for Canada's new system of conditional sentences, which
allows offenders to serve time in the community, Ontario's top court
has ruled.

The Ontario Court of Appeal decided in a unanimous judgment released
yesterday to overturn the conditional sentences handed to Peter Russo
and Michael Vitone, sending both men to prison for two years.

Russo and Vitone were convicted of conspiring to supply four kilograms
of cocaine to a man who turned out to be an undercover police
officer. But rather than taking into account the magnitude of the
drug transaction they were planning, the trial judge erred in
principle by giving them credit for the fact the cocaine was never
delivered, Mr. Justice David Doherty said.

"They deserve no credit for the fact that their criminal aspirations
exceeded their grasp," he said, writing for Mr. Justices Coulter
Osborne and John Laskin. "These (men) were prepared to do significant
damage to others so that they could make money."

But even at that, Doherty said a court should be very reluctant to
send someone serving a community sentence to jail unless there is a
deep sense the total length of time imposed is unacceptable. And this
is where the judge went wrong, he said. A conditional sentence can be
imposed in lieu of a reformatory term of less than two years. While
the judge made "a good case" for imposing such a term by emphasizing
the men's stable backgrounds, a penitentiary sentence was essential to
reflect the seriousness of the crime, Doherty said.

Russo and Vitone have each served about 10 months of their conditional
sentences - which were 23 months for Russo and 18 months for Vitone.
They were also given probation terms.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry