Edmonton lawyer who smuggled meth into remand centre off to prison after appeal fails
'This is a very sad situation where a young lawyer destroyed his career for no good reason'
A young lawyer convicted of smuggling drugs into the Edmonton Remand Centre has one week to turn himself in, after his appeal was rejected this week.
In September, Justin Sidhu was sentenced to four years in prison for smuggling six grams of methamphetamine into the remand centre.
- Justin Sidhu, Edmonton lawyer who smuggled drugs into prison, sentenced to 4 years
- Edmonton lawyer on trial for trafficking drugs to remand centre
The drugs, worth about $6,000, were found inside birthday and Christmas cards that Sidhu brought with him while meeting with an inmate in 2013.
Sidhu's lawyer, Peter Royal, argued before the Court of Appeal that the trial judge misapplied the concept of reasonable doubt.
He said the judge should not have inferred that Sidhu "must have known the envelope contained methamphetamine" when he took it into the remand centre.
The three-member panel rejected that argument, among others, in a nine-page written decision.
"Ultimately, the appellant is the only source of information as to what he was thinking at the time he did what he did," the court said.
"The trial judge inferred that he knew what he was doing. This is a very sad situation where a young lawyer destroyed his career for no good reason.
"But it was not unreasonable to find that he did so."