Kenke deal

Last night Talk Radio was full of rage at the "deal" in Kenke. The general consensus seemed to be that the Crown made a bad deal to get rid of a case.



I doubt that. This was a very high profile case and not something that a Crown would give up on for the sake of expediency. My guess is that there were some very serious weaknesses in the Crown's case. The search warrants were subject to attack and if they went the case went with them.



Now, that said, defence counsel Lon Rose seems to have done a remarkable job. But I don't think the Crown caved in out of a desire to save resources.







Mr. Kenk, 50, pleaded guilty to 16 charges Tuesday, bringing an end to a high-profile case that began in 2008 with a single bicycle-theft arrest and ballooned into the seizure of nearly 3,000 bikes, illegal drugs and other items he’d stashed around the city.


His guilty pleas, on counts of possessing cocaine, marijuana and 10 stolen bikes, averted a months-long trial on dozens more charges and thus relieved the Crown from having to mount a case it had struggled to assemble for its sheer volume of evidence.


In the end, Judge Kathleen Caldwell settled on a 30-month sentence that will see Mr. Kenk serve just four more months in jail.


She gave him the standard double credit for the 13 months he’d already spent in custody awaiting justice.