– NY court accepts guilty plea
Drug accused Guyanese Raffel Christopher Douglas is to be deported shortly, after an NY court accepted a guilty plea he made to a charge of conspiring to distribute cocaine in the US using a telephone.
The order was made yesterday at the New York Eastern District Court during a hearing that was set to decide the Guyanese’s fate after he pleaded guilty to the charge late last month. As a result of his guilty plea, the US government dropped four other drug-related charges against the Guyanese and taking into consideration a previous imprisonment in Canada and the time he spent behind bars since his apprehension in 2005, he was released without any sentence.
The other charges Douglas was facing were distribution of narcotics for illegal importation and three counts of conspiracy to distribute narcotics. He had been indicted in connection with the shipment of 184 kilogrammes of cocaine, seized at JFK Airport on September 21, 2003.
Attorney-at-law Paul Laymon, who represented the US in the case, said in court documents seen by this newspaper responding to Douglas’s plea, that the US government believed that Douglas’s offered plea was fair.
He noted that the case boiled down to the testimony of an informant, who could be skilfully impeached by the defence. Further, Laymon said, the case involved only two kilogrammes of cocaine, though there were some hazy conversations between the confidential informant (CI) and Frederick Hawkesworth (a codefendant in Douglas’s case) about other deals.
“Douglas served seven years in Canada on a case which was eventually overturned and will have served almost three years in this case, meaning he will have been confined for about ten of the past 13 years. His apparent guideline range is not much different from the recommended sentence.
Accordingly, the government would urge the court to accept the plea and sentence the defendant in accordance with the plea agreement,” Laymon asserted.
According to the US case, a CI working with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in Barbados met in Barbados in 2003 with Hawkesworth. The DEA believed that Hawkesworth was moving cocaine to the United States.
According to the CI, he advised Hawkesworth that he had contacts at JFK International Airport in New York who could help him smuggle cocaine through JFK on flights coming from the Caribbean. These discussions led Hawkesworth to introduce the CI to Douglas, who was Hawkesworth’s partner. Thereafter, the CI had additional conversations with Hawkesworth and Douglas about shipping cocaine aboard flights going to JFK. Douglas informed the CI the cocaine would be arriving on a certain JFK flight in a Nike bag. When the flight arrived, agents were there to search it, the US said noting that the Nike bag was on the plane but the bag did not contain cocaine. Douglas then informed the CI that he would send a second test shipment a few days later, on a flight certain and this time in passenger baggage. When the flight arrived, again the agents were there to search it, and while the luggage was there, it did not contain cocaine.
Eventually, in March 2004, the CI met Douglas and Hawkesworth in Barbados at Hawkesworth’s home in Bridgetown and they sold the CI two kilogrammes of cocaine, which the defendants knew were to be transported to New York. The CI paid some money for the cocaine but did not pay the full amount requested, the US said in its case. In April 2004, the CI discussed with Hawkesworth and Douglas about why he was not able to pay all the money he owed them for the two kilogrammes, but according to the US, in reality, the DEA had no money to spare. Hawkesworth eventually told the CI to call his ‘buddy’ because “the man is cursing me….”
The US said its case against Douglas was based almost solely on the informant’s testimony, as corroborated by several recorded telephone calls with Douglas and the codefendant Hawkesworth, along with several recorded face-to-face meetings with Hawkesworth in which Douglas was discussed.
Some of the recorded telephone calls and recorded meetings were hard to hear, though some were audible, the US said in its case, adding that the DEA agents were unable to see the informant meeting Douglas, although two agents did observe a courier deliver the two kilogrammes of cocaine to the informant. The US added that the CI was a paid informant, who has been doing the job since 1999 and has been paid about $250,000 during the course of his service as an informant. The US further noted that the CI was shot while working on a case in the Caribbean, and the DEA paid for his medical treatment.
The CI has a prior felony conviction for robbery, for which he served about four years. He has denied ever being involved in drug trafficking. However, he was a potential witness in a United States prosecution against Charles Miller, his cousin, which occurred in Miami in about 2000.
Additionally, the US noted in its case that Douglas had moved to Canada from Guyana in the early 1990s. In 1994, he was charged in Canada with conspiracy to import cocaine. His trial started on February 20, 1997 and concluded on March 26, 1997 with a jury verdict of guilty. He was in custody from the time of his arrest in February 1994 and remained in custody until about 2001.
On July 8, 1997, he was sentenced to 13 years. He appealed the case and his conviction and sentence were overturned. The crown prosecutor had the option to retry him, but instead Douglas was deported to Guyana after serving about seven years in total.
He apparently returned to Guyana where he lived with his family, the US said in the background of its case, noting that he had been back in Guyana less than three years when he came to the attention of the DEA and its informant in the fall of 2003.
The US stated that in the investigation of the Canadian case and the instant one in New York, agents from Canada and the DEA travelled to Guyana and observed Douglas’s home, which was described as “comfortable but not lavish in what would amount to a middle-class neighbourhood”.
According to the US case, on one occasion when Douglas travelled to Barbados to meet the CI, undercover Barbados police officers observed him, his wife, a teenage son, and a teenage daughter at the home of codefendant Hawkesworth. Douglas was observed playing cricket with his teenage son.
