A Crown prosecutor is asking a judge to impose a lengthy 18-year jail sentence on a high-level North Vancouver fentanyl dealer to send a message to those contributing to the dangerous overdose epidemic that has killed hundreds of people in B.C.
Walter James McCormick, 51, is being sentenced after pleading guilty Aug. 29 to five charges including one charge of trafficking fentanyl in North Vancouver and four charges of possessing drugs, including fentanyl, for the purpose of trafficking in North Vancouver, Langley and Richmond.
McCormick was arrested Feb. 17, 2015 in one of the Lower Mainland’s first major fentanyl trafficking busts that followed a lengthy undercover police investigation under the name “Project Tainted.”
According to details of the case described by the prosecutor in court, when police raided McCormick’s North Vancouver home at 2681 Poplynn Dr., along with his car and Main Street storage locker, they turned up 30,000 fentanyl pills with a street value of $945,000 – along with cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana and Alprazolam (benzodiazepine) pills worth about another $1 million.
Prosecutor Oren Bick said outside court as one of the first cases of fentanyl dealing to go before a judge, he’s hoping for a stiff sentence.
Because fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid, is so much stronger and more dangerous than other drugs, Bick said dealing it should net a harsher sentence.
“I’m asking the judge to treat fentanyl as more serious than heroin and go above the usual cocaine and heroin sentencing range,” he said outside Richmond provincial court following adjournment of McCormick’s sentencing hearing Wednesday.
“There are no fentanyl precedents in B.C. at this high level,” Bick said. “I’m asking the judge to forge new ground and stake out at least a first case in high-level fentanyl decision.”
Bick is asking the judge for a 10-year sentence for McCormick’s role as a top-level supplier in dealing fentanyl and other drugs from a North Vancouver base in early 2015, and a further eight years for his role in dealing drugs, including fentanyl, in Richmond, while out on bail in May 2016.
“This is one of the first (fentanyl dealing cases) to come to court so I think it will be looked at as an example,” he said.
But McCormick’s defence lawyer Lawrence Myers said outside court that handing his client a lengthy jail sentence and making an example of him won’t solve the fentanyl crisis.
“We have to refrain from the lynch mob mentality that if we hang Mr. McCormick out to dry, that will solve the problem. We’ve been dealing with drugs for 40 years – here and in the United States and all over the world – and the problem is worse,” he said.
Myers said that while he doesn’t minimize the current fentanyl crisis, it’s already been proven in American courts that handing out harsh sentences for drug offences doesn’t fix the problem. “It’s expensive and it doesn’t act as a deterrent,” he said.
Myers said McCormick is remorseful and has had a troubled life, including suffering post-traumatic stress disorder after watching one of his co-workers die on the job while working as a steel worker.
Myers said outside court he’ll be asking the judge for a combined eight-year sentence on all of the charges McCormick has pleaded guilty to.
According to details of the case described by the prosecutor in court, McCormick supplied fentanyl pills to a dealer who then sold them to an undercover police officer.
The officer was posing as a mid-level dealer from Yellowknife who planned to sell the drugs in northern mines. Two exchanges, observed by police surveillance officers, happened at a gas station parking lot on Mountain Highway.
When police raided McCormick’s home on Poplynn Drive and a storage locker on Main Street, they turned up huge quantities of fentanyl and other drugs, packaged in Ziploc bags, along with cash and other paraphernalia including a digital scale, pill press, fillers for pill making and a money counter.
After he was arrested, McCormick was released on $100,000 bail.
He was re-arrested and charged with more drug offences at the end of June 2016 after staff at the Sandman Inn in Richmond called police in May to report trouble, evicting him from his hotel room. Police seized 18 kilograms of vacuum-packed marijuana, two kg of cocaine, 1,000 fentanyl pills, more than 4,000 Alprazolam pills and a money counter from his car and hotel room. McCormick has been in custody since June 27.
McCormick’s past criminal record includes a 10-year jail sentence handed down in 2000 for trafficking multiple kilograms of cocaine in the United States, a six-year sentence received in 2002 after pleading guilty to trafficking cocaine in Surrey and a 20-month sentence handed down in 2012 for trafficking three kg of hashish in North Vancouver.
Charges against McCormick’s former spouse Karen Marie Armistead, a registered nurse, were withdrawn by the prosecutor on the same day McCormick pleaded guilty.
B.C.’s director of civil forfeiture has filed a claim against the former couple’s Poplynn Drive home, registered in Armistead’s name, as well as a condo in Oliver and 3.4-acre waterfront property on Gambier Island, saying those properties were all connected with, or bought with the proceeds of, McCormick’s drug dealing.
Defence lawyers are fighting that claim.
