Dealer’s appeal goes bust
Nearly six years after police foiled a diala-dope operation outside the Penticton Walmart store, B.C.’s top court has upheld the convictions against one of the dealers.
Cheryl Lynn Aeichele, 44, and Elkena Michael Knauff, 37, were convicted in B.C. Supreme Court in June 2020 on three counts each of possession of drugs for the purpose of trafficking.
They were arrested in September 2017 in a vehicle parked outside the Penticton Walmart store. Police recovered from the scene 26 grams of cocaine, 28 grams of methamphetamine and nine grams of fentanyl.
The pair’s case proceeded at an unusually slow pace through the court system as their lawyers sought unsuccessfully to have the charges thrown out due to delay and breaches of their clients’ rights at the hands of police.
When the pair was finally sentenced in January 2022, Aeichele, who was described by the judge as “very close to a first-time offender,” received a conditional sentence of 18 months’ house arrest.
Knauff, whose criminal record contained 15 breaches of court orders since 2014, along with convictions for aggravated assault and flight from police, received a 30-month prison term.
Knauff subsequently challenged his convictions in the B.C. Court of Appeal on the basis the trial judge improperly assessed Knauff’s credibility.
According to the BCCA decision, which was handed down Feb. 10, 2023, but only published online last week, at the crux of Knauff’s argument was a small baggie of cocaine police found on his lap.
Knauff testified at trial he was simply along for the ride to Walmart when two men suddenly approached the vehicle in the parking lot. He said one of the men noticed police approaching and tossed the bag of cocaine onto Knauff’s lap through the passenger side window.
Knauff argued he was unfairly forced at trial to explain the unknown man’s motivation for throwing the bag of cocaine at him and to explain why Aeichele parked in a secluded part of the store’s lot.
The Crown at trial described Knauff’s version of events as a “fanciful implausible story,” and the B.C. Court of Appeal agreed.
“Reading the (trial) judge’s reasons as a whole and in the context of the record, I see no error in his credibility finding that Mr. Knauff’s evidence was ‘utterly implausible, irrational,’ and his rejection of that evidence as incredible and ‘made up’,” wrote Justice Gail Dickson on behalf of the three-person appeal panel.
During the sentencing hearing in January 2022, it came out that Knauff had absconded to Surrey after being shot on Oct. 26, 2021, in a failed attempt on his life outside a home in the Indian Rock neighbourhood north of Naramata.