Pubdate: Fri, 21 Jul 2006
Source: Kelowna Capital News (CN BC)
Copyright: 2006, West Partners Publishing Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.kelownacapnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1294
Author: Marshall Jones, Staff Reporter
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Marijuana - Canada)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

CREDIBILITY OF INFORMANT'S TESTIMONY CHALLENGED

Jurors are being asked to place plenty of weight on the  testimony of
a drug dealer turned informant who  fingered Colin Hugh Martin as the
ringleader in a  cross-border marijuana smuggling operation in the
late  1990s.

It appears the lengthy investigation and the long,  drawn-out court
proceedings come down to whether the 12  people who heard the case
believe the informant or not.

Prosecutor Michael LeDressay urged jurors to accept the  evidence of
Dennis Dober, a former cocaine dealer who  got arrested, then had
charges dropped and was paid  cash for his information about the
alleged marijuana  smuggling.

But Martin, who has defended himself throughout the  trial, said they
can't rely on a proven liar.

"(Dober) is in the drivers seat," Martin said in his  closing
submissions after a six-week trial.

"He can completely control police perceptions of what  is a complex
puzzle of what they see from time to time.

"The man was arrested for cocaine dealing, made a deal  with the RCMP,
lied to them about how long he was a  coke dealer and the amounts he
was dealing in, gave  evidence he was being untruthful on where he was
and  how long he was there."

Martin was charged following a lengthy undercover  operation that
included Dennis Dober and some 3,000  intercepted phone calls between
November 1998 and  August 1999.

RCMP teamed up with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency to  keep tabs on
the small group out of Sicamous and Salmon  Arm.

They allege they followed Martin and several other  "co-conspirators"
using snowmobiles and even hiking  over the border to trade large
amounts of marijuana for  U.S. dollars.

Later, they allege that some of the marijuana was  dropped from a
small plane to pre-arranged points in  Washington State.

He is charged with conspiring to traffic and export  marijuana and
launder hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"What we have here is very much a continuing conspiracy  and criminal
enterprise that spanned eight months,"  said prosecutor LeDressay.

"Colin Martin acted as head of the criminal  organization whose
business it was to assemble large  consignments of B.C. grown
marijuana and ship it to the  United States and bring back American
cash and repeat  the cycle over and over and over."

In December 1998, police arrested Martin and his father  in a vehicle
holding $217,000 US. A short time later,  they arrested Colin's
brother, Damyen with $315,000 US  cash.

His sister was stopped carrying 102 pounds of  marijuana.

Colin was also charged with laundering the cash, in  part by buying a
Dodge Viper for $86,000 cash. It was  seized under proceeds of crime
legislation.

The allegations seem clear enough, but Colin told  jurors the case was
full of holes.

He said police surveillance didn't match phone records  of where
Martin supposedly was.

He said none of the evidence shows marijuana being  taken back and
forth across the border and when anyone  even saw a plane, they sorely
misidentified the make of  the aircraft.

He said it made more sense that the intercepted phone  calls displayed
some sort of domestic U.S. marijuana  operation.

"But that is not what I am charged with," he said. "It  is a much more
rational story than the invisible plane  theory."

He said to fully understand the snippets of  conversation from the
wiretaps, jurors would have had  to listen to all 3,000
conversations.

"It seems what you really have been witness to during  the wiretap
period is like a movie that has occasional  bursts of sound but no
video, then video and no sound  and massive parts missing," he said.
"The Crown tries  to fill in the gaps with the fiction of an exporting
  (operation). You should not be asked to make up the  rest of the story.

"What's missing is the context of the conversation for  the wiretap."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake