DROPPED DRUG CHARGES PUSH JUDICIAL APPOINTMENT

Former Creston lawyer William Grant Sheard has been appointed as a
new provincial court judge for the Kootenay region, but it appears to
have taken a botched drug case for the provincial government to make
the announcement.

Sheard, who practiced law in Creston before moving to Cranbrook,
where he became a respected Crown prosecutor for nine years, will
assume his duties on May 17 in Cranbrook Provincial Court. He has
been with the legal firm Miles, Daroux, Zimmer and Sheard for the past decade.

Nelson-Creston MLA Michelle Mungall said she was pleased by the
appointment, but unhappy that "a coke dealer has to get off" before
the government acted to fill a position created by a previous judge's
retirement.

The drug case made provincial headlines recently when drug charges
were dropped against a man who had waited for two years for his case
to be heard.

"I can't believe that despite the long notice and history of case
backlog, it took a coke dealer going free to get this government to
act," said Mungall. "This situation highlights the B.C. Liberal
government's neglect of rural areas' critical needs."

According to Dina Bambrick, executive director of Kootenai Community
Centre, the solicitor general's office has known about this gap in
service for two years as the planned retirement of judges took effect.

"I'm concerned this won't be fixed with the appointment of one
judge," she said. "The backlog is so big it could take years of
criminals going free to catch up and I predict it won't ever at this
rate because we need more judges than were in place as it is."