Van was ‘up to no good’ — but not his client, lawyer says
If a man is arrested driving a van loaded with cocaine, along with several cellphones, his personal belongings, a few energy drinks and a map to a meet location — does that necessarily mean he was the same person who picked up the drugs?
It was among the arguments put before the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal on Wednesday as a convicted cocaine courier seeks a reversal of the guilty verdict that drew a nine-year prison sentence.
Ronald Charles Learning, originally from Golden, B.C., was busted seven years ago as part of an investigation into one of Saskatchewan’s largest drug importation schemes.
As Learning watched via video link from a B.C. prison, his lawyer argued the Crown’s case, built on circumstantial evidence, was insufficient to find the now 35-yearold man guilty.
“I submit the learned trial judge filled in the blanks,” defence lawyer Matthew Schmeling said.
But federal Crown prosecutor Wade Mcbride argued the trial judge assessed the evidence and reached certain sound conclusions. “There’s no evidence anyone else was in the van,” he added.
Justices Neal Caldwell, Peter Whitmore and Robert Leurer reserved decision on the appeal.
One of six men arrested as part of an international investigation into drug smuggling across the Saskatchewan-u.s. border, Learning was the last to be sentenced.
Court heard Learning was the substitute driver on a single load, followed from the Saskatchewan border and intercepted by members of the Regina Integrated Drug Unit. He’d been hired to move 30 kilos of cocaine bricks, worth between $1.2 million and $2.3 million. Working with an inside man, the RCMP substituted the real cocaine — but for about nine grams — for fake powder bricks before it was picked up by a courier near the border south of Val Marie on Oct. 1, 2011. The bricks were in hidden compartments in a Windstar van.
The van was under surveillance from Saskatchewan to Salmon Arm, B.C., where it was stopped and the lone occupant — Learning — arrested. In April 2016 after a trial, Regina Provincial Court Judge Marylynne Beaton found him guilty of possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking.
Schmeling argued Beaton erred in admitting the certificates of analysis of drugs into evidence and had reached an unreasonable verdict based on her analysis of the evidence.
On the issue of reasonableness, he said there was contradictory evidence and imperfect surveillance. It’s possible someone else had taken the van to the pick-up location, making Learning an unwitting “dupe,” unaware of the van’s cargo.
“The van was up to no good,” said Schmeling, adding that didn’t necessarily mean his client was as well. He argued that given a surveillance gap, there are many possibilities. “Aliens?” quipped Caldwell. Mcbride said Beaton made a reasonable inference that Learning and the courier at the pick-up point was the same person. In the absence of an overriding error, “this court is not in a position to unravel the findings of the trial judge,” he added.