Closing arguments at the cocaine trafficking trial of Robert Allen, the Saskatoon Hells Angels member charged in connection with Project Forseti, were adjourned until January after the defence closed its case at Court of Queen’s Bench on Thursday.
Allen took the stand Wednesday as the only defence witness and remained under cross-examination Thursday.
The 36-year-old is accused of offering to get large amounts of cocaine for Noel Harder, a drug dealer who was supplying Allen with pills for his opioid addiction.
What Allen didn’t know was that Harder had signed on to be a police agent in September 2014 and had been secretly recording their conversations until December 2014. Court heard Harder was paid at least $300,000 and had gun charges against him dropped in exchange for working with police.
Harder said in the spring of 2014, Allen broached the idea to get him cocaine from two Hells Angels members in Ontario and take a $5,000 cut from every kilogram sold.
Allen said it was Harder who asked him to get drugs — which he had no intention of doing — but he pretended to go along with the plan so he could continue getting painkillers from Harder.
The trial heard Allen was addicted to opioids due to a back injury and didn’t go to a doctor because it was easier to get them from Harder, who first gave him an oxycodone pill in 2013. Allen said he continued getting pills from Harder until December 2014.
“Which is trafficking after he signed the (police) deal,” defence lawyer Morris Bodnar noted outside the courthouse.
Allen believed the authorities were monitoring him, so the men used code language and hand gestures when discussing the cocaine deal in person and over text message, Harder testified. Bodnar said the fact that the drug deal wasn’t explicitly stated is an important factor.
“The other factor is, no drugs exchanged hands for nine months plus. A person could have walked from eastern Canada with a kilo of coke and got it here sooner,” Bodnar said.
“Drug trafficking by its very nature is a surreptitious activity, so oftentimes there’s not a smoking gun,” federal prosecutor Doug Curliss told reporters. “It’s a matter of looking at all of the pieces.”
Curliss said offering to traffic drugs is an offence under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Even in case law involving fake offers, people have been found both guilty and not guilty, he said.
“The ruse isn’t kind of an automatic one way or the other.”
In court, Bodnar raised the issue of entrapment. Curliss clarified that entrapment arguments can only be addressed after a finding of guilt.
“But when a person is not involved in the drug trade, and the police get an agent to act for them, what is it but entrapment at that stage?” Bodnar said outside court.
The Crown and defence will file written submissions before oral arguments are scheduled to take place on Jan. 16.
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