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Drug charges stayed against man arrested in Project Dolphin

The Crown entered a stay of charges against Alain Gallant, who originally pleaded guilty to drug related charges as part of Project Dolphin, due to inadmissible evidence.
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THUNDER BAY - A man accused of drug-trafficking in the undercover police drug bust known as Project Dolphin walked out of the Thunder Bay courthouse on Tuesday as a free man.

Alain Gallant Junior is the third accused in the case to have had charges withdrawn due to inadmissible evidence.

The drug-related charges against Gallant Junior had been laid in 2015, after officers found data on cellphones and computers seized in police raids.

Those seizures led to the arrests of other men, including Keith Ritchie. They were both charged with conspiracy to possess, traffic, and import a controlled substance.

Gallant Junior entered a guilty plea last September with the assumption the crown had enough evidence to proceed against him. However, in January the Superior Court ruled in Ritchie's case that those records were deemed inadmissible.

The judge found that police breached his Charter of Rights by seizing evidence without a proper warrant. That ruling subsequently found Ritchie and Fortunato Colistro, who was also charged with drug-related offences, to be not guilty last month.

In light of that decision, Gallant Junior applied to withdraw his guilty plea. Crown council, Michael Jones, said he felt it was only appropriate to consent and essentially throw out the charges.

“In light of the court of appeals decision, we decided the evidence in our case would have to be excluded as well as a result of a breach of charter rights,” Jones said.

“Mr. Gallant had entered a guilty plea thinking the crown had the evidence to proceed against him, and we now felt that it was only appropriate that given the very strong decision from the court here in Thunder Bay on that point about excusing the evidence, we thought it was only proper that Mr. Gallant should not be proceeded with on what would amount to a matter of timing on his part.”

Most of the other men arrested, including the drug operation's kingpin, John Tsekouras have already been sentenced to lengthy prison terms following the original 2011 city-wide raid.

(TBT News).




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