Fentanyl: Joe gets years for trafficking deadly dope

People come forward to supply police with evidence they needed to send Jesse Joe away for a long time and send message to other drug dealers.

Jesse Michael Joe, 36 of Fredericton but originally from Burnt Church, was in court on Friday to be sentenced for three drug trafficking offences as well as selling drugs that caused bodily harm, and attempting to subvert the course of justice by asking someone to give a false statement.  Joe was arrested in April after an investigation following the death of one person and the overdose of others in the Burnt Church community.  Joe stood trial on one offence, and pleaded guilty to the others.  Here is a review of what he did, what the Crown wanted for a sentence, and the penalty judge Geri Mahoney gave Joe.

The first trafficking charge was the one Joe stood trial for.  His lawyer said it was the first time he defended a person accused of trafficking where no drugs were found.  The indictment against Joe simply said “schedule 1 drug” but did not specify.

The key component to the trial was the testimony of Victor Lambert.  Lambert said he met Joe earlier in the day and attempted to buy pills from him, Joe didn’t have any change and Lambert waited until he had more money to make the purchase.  Lambert said Joe was selling blue percocets for $7 each or 3 for $20 but he only wanted two and Joe didn’t have change.  When Lambert’s EI cheque landed in his account later in the day he sent Ethan Mitchell to Laurie Dedam’s (Joe’s father’s house where he was staying) to buy 3 pills for $20.

Soon after Lambert snorted half a pill and ingested a second he was out cold.  If Mitchell had not found him passed out, Lambert may have died.  A neighbour performed CPR while waiting for an ambulance to arrive.  The medics injected Lambert with Naloxone and revived him, and then took him to the hospital.  At a preliminary inquiry it was revealed that Joe told police he had overdosed on the same pills and had to be revived at the Fredericton hospital not many days prior to the Burnt Church incidents.  Police accused Joe of selling the pills as repayment to people in the Woodstock area that had helped him with bail in an unrelated matter.

When police began investigating this they also discovered that Joe had instructed Pamela Denny to give a false statement.

For the offences listed above, the federal crown was seeking 30 months in jail for the trafficking, while  the provincial Crown was seeking 9 months in jail for tempting Denny to lie, and 3 months for the harm done to Lambert.

The second trafficking offence came as a result of a statement given to police by Russell Mitchell.  The police tried to get Mitchell to give a statement earlier in the investigation, but Mitchell was afraid and waited several days before cooperating with police.  Mitchell said he met with Joe and went for a drive to buy some pills.  He said Joe had hundreds of pills with him, and Mitchell bought 8.  Mitchell said he bought the pills about a week before Ann Marie Lambert died of an overdose.  He said he took 6 of the pills over the course of a few days and admitted having a different reaction than what he was expecting.  He gave the two pills left over to police for testing and it was confirmed the pills contained fentanyl.

A drug expert testified at the trial of Joe, and said that fentanyl began to become a problem when the legitimate supply of prescribed opiates began to dry up.  He said fentanyl was 100 times stronger than morphine, and when it was put into pills that were manufactured to look like prescription drugs, the quality control was poor and could lead to some pills being much more potent than others.  He likened it to baking chocolate chip cookies where some cookies have more chips than others.  A $3500 shipment of fentanyl (1 Kg from China) can be used to make about $1 million worth of fake percocets.

For this charge, the federal crown was seeking 36 months in jail consecutive to the first sentence.

The third trafficking charge resulted from a statement given to police by Cynthia Joe.  Cynthia told police Jesse had a bag of pills that were blue.   Cynthia was skeptical of the pills because they seem to be fragmenting in the bag, and looked “made”.  The blue color of the pills also made them suspicious because they are not common in Canada, but are in the US according to the drug expert that testified at trial.  Jesse assured Cynthia they were real percocets.

Jesse told Cynthia he brought 200 pills with him to Burnt Church and to let people know they could get them from either him or his father.  His father, Laurie, has also been charged with trafficking and is awaiting plea.

Cynthia agreed to accept a pill from Jesse and snorted half a pill and had a sever reaction almost immediately.  The other half of the pill was not recovered for the investigation.

For this trafficking offence, the crown was seeking a 24 month concurrent sentence.

When word got out that people’s lives were in danger in Burnt Church, the chief notified the  police, Joe got rid of the remaining pills, and he was slammed on social media as being responsible.  Facebook messages from Joe’s girlfriend suggested he had become suicidal.  Police surveilled people known to Joe and eventually arrested him hiding in the back seat of a car.

Joe’s lawyer, the experienced Ed Darrah, said it was a tragic situation.  He maintained Joe didn’t know he was dealing fentanyl and that Joe was surprised with the conviction at trial because of no drug evidence and a lot of circumstantial evidence.

He also minimized the harm to Lambert, saying that Lambert admitted he took other drugs and maybe alcohol on the same day.

Darrah characterized Joe as a street level dealer, not a sophisticated trafficker, and also said that in the three charges only a small amount of pills were involved.

Joe has a long criminal record with 8 assaults, a weapons charge and 2 sexual assaults.  He served 15 months as a youth, and was sentenced to 45 months for the sexual assaults in 2012.  Despite the record, Darrah argued this was Joe’s first drug related offence.  The crown and Darrah agreed not to prolong the sentencing to wait for a detailed report on the effects on Joe from his aboriginal heritage, but it was mentioned that Joe grew up experiencing neglect and abuse, was exposed to substance abuse at a young age, and that his grandmother had been a survivor of the residential school program.

Burnt Church Chief, Alvery Paul, provided a Community Impact Statement for the court to consider at sentencing.  The statement was not read, and Miramichi  Online has requested a copy.

Darrah was seeking a global sentence in the range of 4 years compared to the combined 6.5 year sentence proposed by the Crown.

Judge Mahoney reviewed several cases involving fentanyl and a variety of defendants with long or no criminal records.  All the sentences seem to begin in the 3 year range for trafficking.  She wondered if the three trafficking sentences should not have two of them served concurrently, but the Crown argued that only the 3rd one should be served concurrently.

Mahoney sentenced Joe to 22 months for the trafficking involving Victor Lambert, to 22 months for trafficking to Russell Mitchell (concurrent), and 36 months (consecutive) for trafficking to Cynthia Joe.  She also gave him 6 additional months for the harm that came to Victor Lambert, and 2 additional months for asking Pamela Denny to lie.

The total sentence is 66 months.  Joe will be given 11 months credit for the time he has spent in jail prior to sentencing.