Yesterday a Chinese couple walked free from charges of possessing uncustomed goods. On November 18, 2007, Jianneng Mai and Bijin Zhong, were busted with $63,000 of un-customed goods – including Winston cigarettes, Wall Street cigarettes and Benson and Hedges cigarettes in a building at 89 Vernon Street. They were charged with recklessly acquiring possession of uncustomed goods but yesterday Revenue Magistrate Ed Usher threw out the charges because the warrant wasn’t signed by a Supreme Court judge or a Magistrate.
But more importantly it wasn’t read properly. It was Mai who read it to her common law husband. He doesn’t speak English well so she translated it for him. But according to the law, the Customs Department should have found a third party who spoke Chinese to translate it and read it to Zhong. The reason is that Mai – was a defendant – and a defendant cannot read a warrant to a co-defendant.
Despite the technicality though, the couple had maintained the goods weren’t theirs. If convicted, the couple would have been charged 3 times the value of the uncustomed goods – that’s roughly $189,000.
