Man Faces $75,000 Fine or Prison Time for Cannabis Cultivation and Sale

A 40-year-old man who said he cultivated and sold cannabis to pay off his grandmother’s funeral bill and rebuild his house has until next March to ensure that all of the $75 000 fine imposed on him on Monday is paid.

If he does not, Davion Lavere Ricardo Miller of Bartlett’s Tenantry Road, Sargeant’s Village, Christ Church will have to spend more than six years in Dodds prison.

When the sentence was read to him by Madame Justice Laurie-Ann Smith-Bovell in Supreme Court No. 4, Miller was required to pay $15 000 of the fine forthwith, with the balance to be paid by March 28, 2024. The alternative is six years and 223 days behind bars.

He had pleaded guilty to possession, cultivation and having a trafficable quantity of the drug, which weighed 58.81 kilogrammes and had a street value of $283 600.

“A message must be sent to the public that if you are prepared to be in the drug trade, whether it be in cultivation, importation or trafficking, you must also be willing to accept the hefty penalties that accompany such, and it does not matter to what end you put the financial gain from trafficking in drugs,” the judge declared.

Police executed a warrant at Miller’s home on April 26, 2017, and the drugs were found drying and in packages around the home. There were also 305 plants of varying heights growing in the backyard.

Miller admitted ownership of the illegal drug to police while indicating that he sold the substance to get funds to rebuild his house and pay the balance of his grandmother’s funeral expenses. He had been taking care of her until she passed away in 2018.

According to a pre-sentencing report, Miller, who is self-employed, was found to have a moderate risk of reoffending, having seven previous convictions including for drug possession, assault and occasioning actual bodily harm, soliciting police, and burglary.

In his submissions, Acting Senior State Counsel Rudolph Burnett pointed to the aggravating features of Miller’s crime, including that the amount of cannabis in his possession was a clear indication he intended to make money illegally, the yard’s enclosure was galvanised about 11 feet high to conceal the illegal activity, and his previous drug convictions. Mitigating factors, Burnett said, were Miller’s early guilty plea and his cooperation with police.

The prosecutor asked that a starting sentence of 12 years in prison be imposed with an additional three years added since the aggravating factors outweighed the mitigating circumstances.

He said that the convicted man should be given a one-third discount for his guilty plea and the 23 days he had spent on remand, leaving him with nine years and 11 months.

Alternatively, Burnett said, the court could impose a substantial fine and proposed $200 000 payable in six months.

In his mitigation, Miller’s attorney Marlon Gordon pointed out that Barbados was dealing with the licensing of growing marijuana at the local level and there was an effort to regulate the use of and cultivation of the drug.

He recommended a $10 000 to $15 000 fine and a starting sentence of three to four years, from which the discount for his client’s guilty plea and time spent on remand should be deducted.

In her ruling, Justice Smith-Bovell said: “The court has formed the opinion that this is a serious matter and that a custodial sentence is justified, but it is not the only sentence that can do justice to this case.” However, she said, the fine proposed by Gordon did not reflect the seriousness of the crime, stressing that any fine imposed must act as a deterrent.

Considering that Miller’s action was for financial gain and that there was premeditation to some degree in the cannabis cultivation, the judge described the quantity of drugs as a large amount “which can have an adverse effect on people in our society”.

Mitigating factors included that there was no violence in the commission of the offence and no great level of sophistication in the exercise.

In the circumstances, the judge said, $100 000 was a reasonable fine which, if not paid, would result in a ten-year prison term. From that, she gave Miller a one-third discount for his guilty plea and also deducted his remand period to reach the final sentence for the cultivation offence.

Miller was reprimanded and discharged on the possession and trafficking charges.