SCHOOL DRUG DEALER'S PLEA SOFTENS JUDGE'S SENTENCE

A high school drug dealer's impassioned pleas didn't keep him out of
jail yesterday, but they did make an impact on the judge.

Mark Christopher Richards, 21, of Lower Sackville was sentenced to
seven months in prison and two years probation for drug trafficking at
Millwood High School. During the hearing in Bedford provincial court,
Richards apologized and told Judge Bill MacDonald the 20-month wait
for sentencing gave him a chance to step back and look at his life.

"I had no morals, no values. I mattered to me and that was it," he
said. Narcotics Anonymous meetings, a new group of friends, and a
full-time job have changed him, he said. He searched for work for a
year after being expelled from school and "cried" when he landed a
cleaning job at Northwood Manor. "I couldn't believe someone was
willing to give me - the drug dealer from school - a chance to make my
life better. I stand here today and beg you to let me continue on with
my life."

Richards was arrested Dec. 3, 1996 at the school after a student told
a teacher they smelled marijuana coming from his school bag. RCMP
later found 29 grams of cannabis, 12 hits of LSD, eight grams of
psilocybin (magic mushrooms) and other drug paraphernalia in his bag.
Richards also had $150 and a pager in his pocket.

Millwood's principal urged the court to be firm. "We have become
hardened as each year we see young lives ruined by drugs," Legere
said. "I firmly believe we have to take a look at the use and abuse of
drugs in the school. The law has to take a firm stand on that."

MacDonald acknowledged Richards made "significant progress," but a
more lenient sentence would send a message to high schools "that there
isn't a risk" in drug dealing, he said.

Federal prosecutor Mark Coven said Richards carried three types of
drugs "to appeal to a larger audience. He's more than a petty
retailer." But the amounts, valued at less than $1,500, made him "less
than a wholesaler," Coven said.

He asked for a sentence of 24 to 36 months in a federal institution,
noting five previous convictions in July 1995 for schoolyard
trafficking netted him a lenient sentence of five-months' probation,
and did not "dissuade" him.

"We're not looking at someone who has gone out of his way to victimize
school children; he was a school child at the time," legal-aid lawyer
Anne Copeland argued.

"He's not a very old person," she added. "Not someone who cannot be
stopped or saved; not someone to be thrown into a federal
penitentiary."

Checked-by: (trikydik)