A Sarnia man caught with more than 228 grams of crystal meth in his car after an OPP cruiser’s automatic licence plate scanner flagged a suspended driver on a Lambton County road has been sentenced to three years in prison.
A Sarnia judge said he would have sentenced Kevin Booth, 48, to five years, but went with three – the lowest possible for that amount of drugs coupled with his prior criminal record – because of his Indigenous heritage and the hard work he’s done in the past turning his life around.
“It’s pretty rare to see somebody pull their life together in the way that Mr. Booth did,” Justice Mark Poland said.
But then, he pointed out Booth had almost a quarter of a kilogram of crystal meth in his car.
“A toxic poison that is in the very veins of this community,” he said. “We see it every single day in this courtroom.”
Lambton OPP said an officer’s in-car camera system alerted them of a suspended driver on Oil Heritage Road in Enniskillen Township at 10:45 p.m. on May 30, 2023. The officer noticed signs of cannabis use, so they searched the car and found the drugs, a knife and a BB gun.
Initially facing nine charges, the Petrolia-area parts labourer pleaded guilty to possessing meth for the purpose of trafficking this past summer.
“I commend him for that, for fessing up to what he did and not making light of it,” defence lawyer Robert McFadden said during a recent sentencing hearing.
This was the fourth trafficking-related conviction for Booth, who has more than 50 entries on his criminal record. Among them are convictions for assault causing bodily harm, assault, dangerous driving causing bodily harm, and property damage linked to an altercation outside a bar in January 2016.
Federal prosecutor Brian Higgins asked for four years this time for what he called mid-level trafficking while McFadden pushed for the lowest sentence possible as Booth and his family felt more time behind bars won’t help his recovery.
Along with an addiction to drugs, he has various mental health, childhood and racism issues with which he’s struggled for years.
“This is a very depressing report,” McFadden said of his client’s pre-sentence report. “He has a lot of baggage here.”
Poland said it was a difficult sentencing decision balancing his potential, his background and his past life turnaround with the amount of crystal meth he had with him – a pernicious drug that kills just as many people as fentanyl.
“It just kills them slowly and painfully,” the judge said.
After going with the lowest possible sentence, he gave Booth credit for nine months in pre-plea custody, leaving two years and three months left to serve.
“Good luck to you, sir,” he said as Booth was being led out of the courtroom by security.