Shooter gets life term for murder BUT eligibile for parole in 12 years ===
This and gun control (which only affects law abiding gun owners) is how Canadian justice system and liberal politicians control crime???????????

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Date: Mar 7, 2006 1:53 PM
PUBLICATION: The Hamilton Spectator
DATE: 2006.03.07
EDITION: Final
SECTION: Local
PAGE: A3
BYLINE: BARBARA BROWN
SOURCE: The Hamilton Spectator
ILLUSTRATION: Photo: Jason Porter, 25, was shot in a drug deal that
wentwrong.
WORD COUNT: 486

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Drug dealer gets life term for murder of city man

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A Toronto drug dealer who shot and killed an east Hamilton man during an
armed marijuana rip-off was handed a life sentence with no eligibility
of parole for 12 years.

Superior Court Justice Alan Whitten said Allister Derrick Simon, 27, was
raised in a stable, caring home and had had plenty of opportunities to
change the course of his life. Instead, Simon chose to stay involved
with drugs and gun-toting gangsters, a path that would now take him to a
penitentiary.

A Hamilton jury convicted Simon on Dec. 13 of the second-degree murder
of Jason Porter, 25, who was shot in the kitchen of his Wexford Avenue
North home three years ago on March 31.

Porter, whose wife and young son were in the home at the time he was
killed, did not know Simon or the other Toronto man, Everton Philbert
Cribb, 24, who were brought to his home by acquaintances in order to buy
a half pound of marijuana.

Once inside, however, Simon and Cribb pulled out handguns. A struggle
ensued and Porter was shot once through the chest and collapsed on the
floor in front of his wife.

Near the eve of trial, Cribb decided to enter a guilty plea to
manslaughter and to testify against his co-accused, Simon. Cribb
received the equivalent of a seven-year prison term and is expected to
be deported to Jamaica when he becomes eligible for parole in about two
years.

Defence lawyer Edward Sapiano argued at trial that while Simon was
guilty of taking a gun into Porter’s house, his client had been falsely
accused by Cribb of pulling the trigger. He suggested Cribb lied to
protect his own interest and to get a more lenient plea deal for
himself.

Sapiano noted assistant Crown attorney Michael Fox had posed several
theories to the jury of how Porter might have been killed, including the
possibility that Cribb had fired the murder weapon and that Simon was
nonetheless still guilty as a party to the robbery and the killing.

Sapiano urged the judge to impose the minimum 10-year period of parole
ineligibility for second-degree murder, arguing that even in the
sentencing phase of the proceeding his client was still entitled to
whatever benefit of the doubt remained where the facts were concerned.

Fox argued that the punishment must reflect society’s abhorrence of gun
violence and recommended Simon serve at least 15 years before being
eligible for parole.

In passing sentence, Whitten said judges do not act in a “social cocoon”
and must be alive to the concerns of the public about mounting gun
violence.

He said Simon and Cribb were obviously aware that somebody could get
killed when they walked into the Porter house concealing loaded guns.

“What was the necessity of carrying a gun into the Porter household? It
was truly senseless and unnecessary,” said the judge.

George Porter, the father of the slain man, said he prays his family can
move on now that the case is over.

Porter said he is worried about Jason’s five-year-old son, who has told
his grandfather more than once that he “wants to die so he can go and
visit his daddy.”