A 45-year-old mar­i­jua­na traf­fick­er was sen­tenced yes­ter­day to 16 years in prison.Samuel Rame­sar, a scrap iron deal­er of Cen­te­nary Street, Tu­na­puna stood silent­ly in the pris­on­er en­clo­sure of the Port-of-Spain First Court as the sen­tence was passed by Jus­tice De­van Ram­per­sad. In pass­ing sen­tence, Ram­per­sad said he con­sid­ered the se­ri­ous­ness of the of­fence as well as the fact that he (Rame­sar) was charged with co­caine traf­fick­ing while he was on bail for mar­i­jua­na traf­fick­ing.

He al­so ac­knowl­edged that Rame­sar's crim­i­nal trac­ing re­vealed he had served nine years in prison for rob­bery with vi­o­lence and for de­fraud­ing a man of $86,500.Rame­sar plead­ed guilty to the co­caine charge in No­vem­ber 2012 and was slapped with a $15,000 fine.It took a nine-mem­ber ju­ry be­fore Ram­per­sad al­most three hours to come to a unan­i­mous ver­dict for Rame­sar, when he was con­vict­ed in Ju­ly last year on the mar­i­jua­na charge.

Dur­ing his brief tri­al, the State led ev­i­dence that on De­cem­ber 20, 2002, Rame­sar was dri­ving with an­oth­er man near the Uri­ah But­ler High­way and Bam­boo No 1, Val­sayn, when they were stopped by po­lice.While search­ing the car, po­lice found a black garbage bag un­der Rame­sar's seat. The bag con­tained three plas­tic pack­ages of mar­i­jua­na. The drugs val­ued at over $300,000 weighed a to­tal of 3.5 ki­los.

In pre­sent­ing a mit­i­ga­tion plea for Rame­sar, his at­tor­ney Pe­ter Carter said the court had to im­pose lengthy cus­to­di­al sen­tence for his client.How­ev­er, he sug­gest­ed the sen­tence be 13 years im­pris­on­ment.Carter claimed his client on­ly earned a "mod­est" in­come from col­lect­ing scrap iron and en­gaged in traf­fick­ing drugs to sup­ple­ment his in­come to sup­port his com­mon-law wife and five chil­dren.

He al­so sug­gest­ed that the quan­ti­ty of drugs found on his client was sub­stan­tial­ly less than in sim­i­lar cas­es where ac­cused peo­ple were sen­tenced to be­tween 14 and 16 years in prison.In re­sponse, State pros­e­cu­tors Brent Win­ter and Ravi­ta Per­sad raised Rame­sar's crim­i­nal record as the main ag­gra­vat­ing fac­tor Ram­per­sad should con­sid­er in pass­ing sen­tence.