An inmate will have 57 months to contemplate what went wrong with a plan to smuggle morphine into the Drumheller Institution.
Eric Pearson was in Court of Queen’s Bench on Thursday, May 2 to be sentenced for two counts of possession of drugs for the purposes of trafficking. Pearson was found guilty earlier this year and was in possession of 190 grams of marijuana and 20 - 199 milligram morphine pills.
The charges stem from and event on April 11, 2010, when minimum-security unit inmates Pearson and Ashley Yardley ventured into an out-of-bounds area. Pearson kept watch while Yardley retrieved the package, which contained the drugs. Officers in a mobile unit spotted them. Yardley was observed throwing the package on to the roof of a nearby building.
Yardley was charged with possession for the purposes trafficking but was found not guilty previous to last week’s sentencing.
Federal Prosecutor Bill Herman argued for a 5-7 year sentence, outlining aggravating factors including his previous record, the sophistication of the operation, and that it occurred in a federal institution.
Justice C. M. Jones sentenced Pearson to a global sentence of five years and six months. He gave Pearson credit for nine months and 21 days of pretrial custody, leaving approximately 57 months to serve.
