Drugs, weapons draw 9½-year sentence
Clayton Maynard Ernest Townes, 37, of McAdam, asked court to restore seven-year deal he’d rejected for long list of charges arising after search of home early last year
A McAdam man who’d rejected a seven-year plea deal for a long list of crimes - including drug-trafficking and weapons offences - was sentenced Tuesday to almost a decade behind bars.
Clayton Maynard Ernest Townes, 37, of Harvey Road in McAdam, appeared in Fredericton provincial court late last month for a sentencing hearing on a long list of charges dating back to January 2022, and he appeared again remotely in court Tuesday to hear the judge’s decision.
Judge Cameron Gunn imposed an overall sentence of 9 ½ years in prison, less credit for time spent on remand.
The judge noted Townes had been in custody 627 days since his arrest.
After one factors in the standard 1½-to-one remand credit formula, that means Townes gets a credit of about 31 months for the time he’s already served.
Court heard previously that RCMP officers were asked to accompany Department of Social Development workers during a visit to the Townes home on Jan. 28, 2022, and during that visit, an unsecured firearm and drugs could be seen in plain sight.
That prompted officers to arrest Townes and to obtain a search warrant for the premises.
Drugs - including meth, cocaine, MDMA and hydromorphone - worth a combined street value of about $24,000 were found, as were three rifles, two handguns (one of which was loaded), one shotgun, one revolver and a crossbow.
Also located were several stolen vehicles.
Townes eventually pleaded guilty to possession of various drugs for the purpose of trafficking, weapons crimes and possession of stolen property, as well as a breach of a court-ordered prohibition against possessing firearms.
Gunn said the offender admitted to 33 crimes in all. Those guilty pleas represent a mitigating factor in his case, the judge said, as does his contrition.
“He has expressed sincere remorse and regret for his actions,” Gunn said.
But the court also had to consider the aggravating factors in the case, he said, such as the seriousness of the crimes, the number of offences, the fact that there were loaded firearms in the home and that there was a young child present in the same space as guns and drugs.
Townes’ criminal record doesn’t include past convictions for possession of drugs for the purpose of trafficking, the judge said, but it does include prior weapons offences, which gave rise to the firearms ban to which the offender was subject at the time.
While the Crown had sought a prison term of 10 to 11 years in prison, defence lawyer Joel Hanson argued last month that seven years was a fit sentence.
He had pointed out the Crown had offered his client a seven-year deal, but that Townes had rejected it, believing a lesser sentence might be forthcoming.
The defence later revised its position and approached the Crown about the seven-year deal, Gunn said Tuesday, but the prosecution wasn’t prepared to offer it again.
The judge said this wasn’t a case in which the Crown reneged on a proposed plea offer, but rather that Townes had turned it down. The court can’t enforce an agreement the defence had declined, he said.
Furthermore, Gunn said, higher courts have directed sentencing judges to take a tough stance against trafficking offences when they involve hard drugs such as the ones Townes had at his home last year.
Hanson had also argued in September that his client should be given an enhanced remand credit because of the more onerous conditions at the Saint John jail during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But Gunn said higher courts have found that COVID-19 restrictions weren’t so extreme as to trigger additional credit for time spent on remand, so he dismissed that argument.
In addition to the prison term, the judge imposed a lifetime firearms prohibition, an order for Townes to submit a DNA sample for inclusion in a criminal database and an order of forfeiture for the items seized from Townes’ home.
Don MacPherson can be contacted at ftonindependent@gmail.com.
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