-despite deportation
Despite an application for deportation, which was not challenged by the prosecution, Guyanese Raffel Christopher Douglas has been sentenced to 30 months in prison with a further three years of supervision on release. He was also ordered to pay a nominal fine of US$100.
Justice Raymond J Dearie of the Eastern District Court of New York handed down the sentence on April 14 last, after Douglas pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute cocaine in the United States.
Douglas had been indicted on six charges, which included distribution of narcotics for illegal importation and three counts of conspiracy to distribute narcotics. He had been indicted in connection with the shipment of 184 kilogrammes of cocaine seized at JFK Airport on September 21, 2003.
Following his guilty plea to count five of the six counts he faced, the prosecution said it would drop the five other charges against him.
Douglas had then applied through his lawyer to be released without sentence and deported. Prosecuting attorney Paul Laymon, on behalf of the US government had accepted Douglas’s offered plea as “fair”, taking into consideration a previous imprisonment in Canada and the time he spent behind bars since his apprehension in 2005.
“Douglas served seven years in Canada on a case which was eventually overturned and will have served almost three years in this case, meaning he will have been confined for about ten of the past 13 years. His apparent guideline range is not much different from the recommended sentence. Accordingly, the government would urge the court to accept the plea and sentence the defendant in accordance with the plea agreement,” Laymon had said. However, the final decision rested with the judge and Justice Dearie, while agreeing to dismiss the other five counts, determined that the case called for a custodial sentence. He therefore sentenced Douglas to be committed to the custody of the US Bureau of Prisons for a total term of 30 months as well as a nominal criminal monetary penalty of US$100. Upon his release from custody, Justice Dearie said, Douglas would be supervised for three years.
Under the terms of his supervision, Douglas must report to the probation office within 72 hours of his release. During the three years, he must refrain from committing any other federal, state or local crime and must submit himself to a drug test 15 days after he leaves prison and then two periodic tests afterwards.
The standard terms of his supervision include him being unable to leave the jurisdiction without the permission of the court or his probation officer. He must also report to his probation officer once a month for the duration of the three years and must inform that officer in advance of any change of address.
Contacts
According to the US case against Douglas, a confidential informant (CI) with the Drug Enforcement Admin-istration (DEA) in Barbados met in Barbados in 2003 with Frederick Hawkesworth (a co-defendant in Douglas’s case).
The DEA believed that Hawkesworth was moving cocaine to the United States. According to the CI, he advised Hawkesworth that he had contacts at JFK International Airport in New York who could help him smuggle cocaine through JFK on flights coming from the Caribbean. These discussions led Hawkesworth to introduce the CI to Douglas, who was Hawkesworth’s partner. Thereafter, the CI had additional conversations with Hawkesworth and Douglas about shipping cocaine aboard flights going to JFK. Douglas informed the CI the cocaine would be arriving on a certain JFK flight in a Nike bag. When the flight arrived, agents were there to search it, the US said noting that the Nike bag was on the plane but the bag did not contain cocaine. Douglas then informed the CI that he would send a second test shipment a few days later, on a flight certain and this time in passenger baggage. When the flight arrived, again the agents were there to search it, and while the luggage was there, it did not contain cocaine.
Eventually, in March 2004, the CI met Douglas and Hawkesworth in Barbados at Hawkesworth’s home in Bridgetown and they sold the CI two kilogrammes of cocaine, which the defendants knew were to be transported to New York. The CI paid some money for the cocaine but did not pay the full amount requested, the US said in its case. In April 2004, the CI discussed with Hawkesworth and Douglas about why he was not able to pay all the money he owed them for the two kilogrammes, but according to the US, in reality, the DEA had no money to spare. Hawkesworth eventually told the CI to call his ‘buddy’ because “the man is cursing me….”
The US said its case against Douglas was based almost solely on the informant’s testimony, as corroborated by several recorded telephone calls with Douglas and the codefendant Hawkesworth, along with several recorded face-to-face meetings with Hawkesworth in which Douglas was discussed. Some of the recorded telephone calls and recorded meetings were hard to hear, though some were audible, the US said in its case, adding that the DEA agents were unable to see the informant meeting Douglas, although two agents did observe a courier deliver the two kilogrammes of cocaine to the informant. The US added that the CI was a paid informant, who has been doing the job since 1999 and has been paid about $250,000 during the course of his service as an informant.
The US further noted that the CI was shot while working on a case in the Caribbean, and the DEA paid for his medical treatment. The CI has a prior felony conviction for robbery, for which he served about four years. He has denied ever being involved in drug trafficking. However, he was a potential witness in a United States prosecution against Charles Miller, his cousin, which occurred in Miami in about 2000.
Additionally, the US noted in its case that Douglas had moved to Canada from Guyana in the early 1990s. In 1994, he was charged in Canada with conspiracy to import cocaine. His trial started on February 20, 1997 and concluded on March 26, 1997 with a jury verdict of guilty. He was in custody from the time of his arrest in February 1994 and remained in custody until about 2001. On July 8, 1997, he was sentenced to 13 years. He appealed the case and his conviction and sentence were overturned. The crown prosecutor had the option to retry him, but instead Douglas was deported to Guyana after serving about seven years in total.
He apparently returned to Guyana where he lived with his family, the US said in the background of its case, noting that he had been back in Guyana less than three years when he came to the attention of the DEA and its informant in the fall of 2003. The US stated that in the investigation of the Canadian case and the instant one in New York, agents from Canada and the DEA travelled to Guyana and observed Douglas’s home, which was described as “comfortable but not lavish in what would amount to a middle-class neighbourhood”.
