Convicted drug trafficker’s appeal dismissed

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/02/2020 (2220 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The provincial Court of Appeal has dismissed the appeal of a Winnipeg man convicted of several drug trafficking charges during a national sting in 2014.

Jason Morris Ong was one of 14 people, including nine Manitobans, charged during what the Manitoba Integrated Organized Crime Task Force called Project Distress, a 15-month investigation that culminated in officers raiding several houses in Winnipeg and one in the R.M. of MacDonald.

Ong was convicted in 2017 of three counts of trafficking cocaine, conspiracy to traffic cocaine, and the possession of proceeds of crime. He received two concurrent eight-year sentences as a result, but went before the Court of Appeal on Jan. 30 of this year in an attempt to get his charges dropped.

Along with the others charged, Ong was convicted after a civilian agent with a history of drug trafficking was brought in by the task force with the intention of negotiating transactions with buyers. That agent, using a privacy software called PGP, negotiated three sales with someone with the PGP address ChicagoCubs.

“Several months after…the accused was arrested in possession of the ChicagoCubs phone,” the court decision said.

Ong then challenged his arrest, and sought to have the phone excluded as evidence in his trial under Section 24.2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, arguing that the police lacked reasonable grounds to believe he was ChicagoCubs.

A judge ruled the information supporting the conclusion that Ong was ChicagoCubs was “substantial” and that the phone itself served as circumstantial evidence. At trial, the appeal decision reads, more evidence, including testimony, was brought forth, and the judge was “satisfied that ‘the only reasonable inference to be drawn…is that [the accused] was ChicagoCubs.'”

In appeals court, it was decided that the trial judge didn’t “materially misapprehend” evidence or make any error with the circumstantial evidence.”

“We are also not convinced that the verdicts were unreasonable,” the decision reads. “It was for the trial judge to draw the line between speculative and reasonable inferences; in our view, she could reasonably have come to the decision she reached.”

In January, the R.M. of Macdonald’s Jared Devloo, also convicted following Project Distress, had his appeal of his 10-year sentence for drug trafficking dismissed by the court of appeal.

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca