Former gang member who testified against his fellow gang members gets no sympathy from the court
The Supreme Court today upheld a 12-year prison sentence handed down by the Eastern High Court to a former gang member who is due to testify against 16 of his former brothers-in-arms.

The 25-year-old, known as MFP, was convicted by a district court for attempted murder and assault. The decision was later upheld by the Eastern High Court.

The Supreme Court had to decide whether MFP would qualify for a reduced sentence in exchange for co-operating with the police to provide testimony against members of biker gangs AK81 and Hells Angels.

MFP, a defected member of Hells Angels affiliate AK81, has confessed to five counts of attempted murder and two counts of assault.

Lawyers for the 16 gang members facing trial have stated that they will seek to undermine the credibility of the witness as well as the police’s arguments for convincing him to speak about his former friends.

The assault case against a member of the local Hell’s Angels motorcycle club is built on flimsy evidence, unreliable informants, and broad yet shaky claims of criminal racketeering activity by the organization, a defense lawyer argued today.

At a detention hearing for Robert “Bugsy” Moran Jr., attorney Scott Green maintained that the government has spent years apparently trying to build a criminal case against club members and came away with nothing but a five-year-old assault that prosecutors charged last week before the statute of limitations expired.

Moran, 59, is accused of using a baseball bat to assault a drunken man at a Lyell Avenue bar in May 2006. Prosecutors also last week charged four others with either helping set up or covering up the beating of the man, who supposedly made a disparaging comment about the club.

Authorities allege that the beating was part of a racketeering enterprise, carried out to strengthen the individuals’ standing with the Hell’s Angels.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Brett Harvey urged U.S. Magistrate Judge Marian Payson to keep Moran jailed pending trial. Federal probation officers recommended that Moran, who only has a minor criminal record, be released on electronic monitoring.

Payson today did not rule on Moran's detention, asking Green to provide more information about the property of a Moran friend that might be used to post bond. Payson also asked Green to determine whether Moran could maintain a job other than his current employment as a commercial driver, which does not have set hours.

Harvey has claimed that Moran is too violent to release, but Green pointed out that police have no claims of violent crimes by Moran since the alleged assault. Since police suspected Moran of the assault in 2006, “one must wonder why don’t you take this kind of person off the street,” Green said.

“The case that they have now is no different than the case they had four years, 11 months ago against my client,” Green said.

Harvey said this week that the arrest in the assault took so long because of the cover-up by alleged co-conspirators.

Norman Clay Stanton was originally sentenced to six years concurrent for five offences: Conspiracy to commit unlawful confinement, unlawful confinement, robbery and assault causing bodily harm.

In a unanimous judgment this week, a three-judge panel of the B.C. Court of Appeal allowed his appeal and varied the sentence to four years for the offences. In written reasons, Justice Daphne Smith cited the trial judge's failure to consider Stanton's efforts at rehabilitation, resulting in a sentence "that fell outside the range of sentences for similar offences and similar offenders and that was demonstrably unfit."

The charges stemmed from October 2001, when a man named Alexander Goldman had his Surrey marijuanagrowing operation taken over by Stanton's brother, former East End Hells Angels member Juel (Juels) Ross Stanton, who was fatally shot outside his home last year.

Goldman recalled that Juels and his associates arrived and said they were taking over the grow operation, telling Goldman to get lost.

When Goldman, then in the witness protection program, appealed to Juels for money to live on, Goldman was taken to a Coquitlam warehouse and beaten so badly he spent five days recovering in hospital with black eyes, broken ribs and fractured facial bones. After the attack, the Crown contended, Goldman started getting calls from Richard Doucet, who convinced Goldman to meet him at a grocery store in Surrey on Oct. 15, 2001.

At the time, Doucet was under surveillance by police investigating two murders at a Surrey crack house known as the House of Horrors.

A police wiretap operation captured Doucet calling Juels's brother, Norman, and discussing how people were looking for Goldman. Norman was heard directing Doucet to confine Goldman if he was found. At the trial of the Stanton brothers and two coaccused, police testified they watched a van leased by Norm Stanton arrive near the arranged meeting place. However, Goldman and another man met Doucet and followed him in their vehicles to a nearby basement suite, where Goldman was restrained and assaulted with brass knuckles by Juels.