Trucker says $5 million dope bust illegal

WINNIPEG – – When the Mounties pulled over and searched James Kenyon’s tractor-trailer on the Trans-Canada near Headingly, Man., in October, 2006, they found about a $5 million worth of cocaine and ecstasy.

And Kenyon’s not denying that he was carrying the stuff.

However, he and his lawyer Giselle Champagne are arguing that the Mounties had no right to conduct the search, so the case should thrown out of court.

The RCMP, Champagne told a Manitoba judge last week, were "on a fishing expedition."

According to published media reports, they stopped the truck for a routine inspection, spotted some dope paraphernalia, looked further and found 40 one-kilo bricks of coke and about 200,000 ecstasy pills in the roof lining in the cab. They then arrested Kenyon.

He spent several nights in the tank before being released on $75,000 bail.

Champagne told Queen’s Bench Justice Kenneth Hanssen that the police should have obtained a warrant before searching the truck and therefore, she said, "to admit the evidence in this case would be to grant a windfall to the prosecution and amount to judicial encouragement of such conduct by police authorities in the future."

Lawyers for the Crown argued that the search was legal and the evidence legitimate.

Justice Hanssen has reserved his verdict.