4. Regina v. AZS [Provincial Court of Alberta, Calgary – May 2019]

Over the course of 7 months AZS was “alleged” to have been involved in no less than 8 separate hand-to-hand cocaine transactions involving the same Calgary Police Service (“CPS”) undercover officer. To complicate matters, a video was obtained in relation to several of the undercover transactions and on take-down day (the date of AZS’s arrest) he was found in possession of a quantity of cocaine that was obviously packaged for sale.

As a consequence of the foregoing, AZS was charged with the following offences:

• 8 counts of trafficking in cocaine contrary to Section 5(1) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.
• 8 counts of possessing proceeds of crime contrary to Section 355(b) of the Criminal Code.
• 1 count of possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking contrary to Section 5(2) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

As AZS was facing a lengthy period of imprisonment in a federal institution IF convicted, he retained the legal services of Patrick Fagan to defend this most serious drug prosecution.

For obvious reasons, at first blush, AZS looked “dead in the water” in relation to all charges. The drugs purchased analyzed as cocaine, identification was certainly not an issue and the hand-to-hand transactions certainly fell within the legal definition of “trafficking”.

As Patrick Fagan has discovered during the course of the past 3 decades, however, regardless of the ostensibly grim outlook from a defence perspective, there always seems to be something that can make the ultimate difference between winning and losing. As it ultimately turned out, AZS’s case would be no exception to this general observation.

Patrick Fagan endeavoured to breathe life into every potential “angle” (ie: defence) which presented itself in the not-so-unique circumstances of AZS’s case. In the final analysis, after close to 2 years of unremitting effort by Patrick Fagan, he was successful in resolving this case.

BOTTOM LINE: 2 weeks prior to commencement of trial proceedings Patrick Fagan was successful in killing this most serious prosecution in its entirety by way of the entry of a Stay of Proceedings.