Woman slapped with 2-year sentence for ganja granted bail pending appeal

Anitha Qualis, a mother of four, who was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment after pleading guilty to trafficking one pound of marijuana, was on Monday released on $50,000 bail pending an appeal.
At her first court appearance on September 21, 2020, Qualis pleaded guilty to the charge when she appeared before Magistrate Crystal Lambert at the Bartica Magistrate’s Courts.

Police had stated that on September 19, 2020, Qualis was at Karrau Landing, Mazaruni River, Essequibo, when she was seen acting in a suspicious manner.
She was arrested and taken to the Bartica Police Station where a search was conducted on her person. It was at that time, a small black plastic bag containing the cannabis was found hidden in her hair.
At the very first chance, Qualis had expressed remorse to the police and claimed ownership. She begged for mercy, claiming that the father of her children had abandoned her and, as the police alleged, she said that she was trying to get food for them to eat.
In fact, she told the court, “I accepted the weed, I am a mother of four, and my children’s father left for the interior, and I never heard from him again. I decided to try a thing to provide for my children.” A probation report noted that she was not fortunate to have opportunities in life to advance herself.
The 35-year-old woman was unable to complete primary school because she had to tend to her sick father in the Arima, Berbice River area. She became a mother at the age of 15 and sought refuge in an abusive relationship which saw her producing three more children.

The man who fathers Qualis’ last three children, according to her lawyer Siand Dhurjon, abandoned her this year.
According to the lawyer, on the day of sentencing, Magistrate Lambert accepted that there were special reasons in Qualis’ case which warranted a sentence below the minimum sentence prescribed in the Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances (Control) Act.
The Magistrate, however, did not agree with the lawyer’s submissions that Qualis should be given a short sentence or no sentence given the mitigating factors in her favour.
Despite an application by Dhurjon under the Criminal Law Reform Act to have his client’s sentence suspended, the Magistrate refused to grant it, stating that she “did not see reason enough for the suspension of her sentence.”
In his application for bail pending appeal before High Court Judge Navindra Singh, Dhurjon argued, “the refusal of the learned Magistrate to suspend Qualis’ sentence goes against recent precedents and practices in the summary courts as Qualis is a first-time offender of a nonviolent crime faced with such exceptional circumstances.”
According to the defence counsel, this is especially in light of the novel coronavirus which has afflicted at least 200 inmates of the prison population. To date, only just over half of the population has been tested for the disease.
“The policy of Government is that first-time offenders shouldn’t be in prison for small amounts of cannabis; it is a burden on our penal institutions. I read in the news that legislation is being drafted to mandate that jail sentences be removed for such small quantities, nevertheless, the Magistrate had the discretion under Section 73(1) of the Act to order little or no jail time.”
Further, the lawyer contended that the sentence imposed on his client is “excessive, inordinate and, unduly severe.” This is so, he said, because it fails to take into account the mitigating factors in favour of his client.
Moreover, the defence attorney argued that the fine of $754,500 which Qualis was ordered to pay is also excessive because the “illegal drug itself – just about one pound – was incapable of being worth more than $50,000, that being its street value.”