Source: Halifax Herald (Canada) Pubdate: Thursday, June 25, 1998 Contact: Nancy Radcliffe -- The Daily News SCHOOL DRUG DEALER'S PLEA SOFTENS JUDGE'S SENTENCE A high school drug dealer's impassioned pleas didn't keep him out of jail yesterday, but they did make an impact on the judge. Mark Christopher Richards, 21, of Lower Sackville was sentenced to seven months in prison and two years probation for drug trafficking at Millwood High School. During the hearing in Bedford provincial court, Richards apologized and told Judge Bill MacDonald the 20-month wait for sentencing gave him a chance to step back and look at his life. "I had no morals, no values. I mattered to me and that was it," he said. Narcotics Anonymous meetings, a new group of friends, and a full-time job have changed him, he said. He searched for work for a year after being expelled from school and "cried" when he landed a cleaning job at Northwood Manor. "I couldn't believe someone was willing to give me - the drug dealer from school - a chance to make my life better. I stand here today and beg you to let me continue on with my life." Richards was arrested Dec. 3, 1996 at the school after a student told a teacher they smelled marijuana coming from his school bag. RCMP later found 29 grams of cannabis, 12 hits of LSD, eight grams of psilocybin (magic mushrooms) and other drug paraphernalia in his bag. Richards also had $150 and a pager in his pocket. Millwood's principal urged the court to be firm. "We have become hardened as each year we see young lives ruined by drugs," Legere said. "I firmly believe we have to take a look at the use and abuse of drugs in the school. The law has to take a firm stand on that." MacDonald acknowledged Richards made "significant progress," but a more lenient sentence would send a message to high schools "that there isn't a risk" in drug dealing, he said. Federal prosecutor Mark Coven said Richards carried three types of drugs "to appeal to a larger audience. He's more than a petty retailer." But the amounts, valued at less than $1,500, made him "less than a wholesaler," Coven said. He asked for a sentence of 24 to 36 months in a federal institution, noting five previous convictions in July 1995 for schoolyard trafficking netted him a lenient sentence of five-months' probation, and did not "dissuade" him. "We're not looking at someone who has gone out of his way to victimize school children; he was a school child at the time," legal-aid lawyer Anne Copeland argued. "He's not a very old person," she added. "Not someone who cannot be stopped or saved; not someone to be thrown into a federal penitentiary." - --- Checked-by: (trikydik)