Mike on Crime

By Mike McIntyre
Winnipeg Free Press

Five Chinese migrants should be given the benefit of the doubt and cleared of charges they knowingly participated in a massive marijuana grow operation, their lawyer argued Thursday.
Mike Cook said it’s obvious the accused had no idea what they were in for after being recruited in Toronto’s Chinatown district to work on the rural Manitoba pot farm in the fall of 2005.
“It’s easy for them to have made an honest mistake,” Cook said during closing arguments of the trial.
All five testified in their own defence and told court they didn’t realize the crop they were working on was marijuana. Some believed it was a fruit or vegetable, while one man thought it was “Chinese medicinal herbs”.
Cook said none of his clients had ever seen a pot plant before.
“This is not a case of them turning a blind eye to anything. There’s nothing outstanding about a marijuana plant,” he said.
“There’s no evidence anyone ever came into their citizenship class holding a marijuana plant and saying ‘Don’t touch one of these’.”
Crown attorney Anne Turner said the accused must have realized what they were doing was illegal and that offers to make up to $300 a day were “too good to be true”.
She said allowing them to walk free would send the wrong message.
“These accused are here asking to be held to a standard lower then any other Canadian citizen,” said Turner.
“Their blanket denials…can’t hold weight. They deliberately refrained from asking any questions because they wanted to remain ignorant.”
Queen’s Bench Justice Deborah McCawley has reserved her verdict until later this fall.
She told lawyers there is clearly a “cultural issue” at play which she must consider and that the actions of the accused can’t be compared to what “you or I” would have done.
The five accused were among 28 people arrested two years ago following an extensive undercover RCMP investigation that yielded $19 million worth of pot. They are the first to go on trial.
Police found 25 men and three women sleeping side-by-side, head-to-toe in every room of a tiny, 700-square-foot house in Sundown, Manitoba, which is about 140 kilometres east of Winnipeg.
More than 10,000 mature pot plants were thriving in four sprawling greenhouses sitting on the same rural farm property, which was hidden from the public by a thick curtain of trees.
Khyong Wong, the alleged mastermind behind the grow operation, has avoided prosecution by somehow slipping out of Canada while the subject of an undercover police investigation.
He is being sought on a Canada-wide warrant. His most recent address was in Burnaby, B.C., but justice sources say he has likely returned to his native Hong Kong.
Wong, 43, has lived in various provinces including B.C., Manitoba and Ontario, but would probably not face extradition even if caught because he is a Chinese national and therefore exempt.