Notorious B.C. drug smuggler wins early release from U.S. prison, returns to Canada
CTV
John Philip Stirling, 68, was freed from an Oregon prison after arguing successfully for an early release due to his difficulty controlling his diabetes while incarcerated.
John Philip Stirling, 68, was freed last year from the Sheridan prison near Salem, Ore., after arguing successfully for an early release due to his difficulty controlling his diabetes while incarcerated.
The Vancouver Island man told a U.S. District Court judge in April that he planned to return to Canada within 12 hours of his release, providing the court with an address in Victoria where he would stay, according to dozens of pages of handwritten submissions obtained by CTV News.
Stirling was arrested in April 2019 with nearly 750 litres of liquid meth and several bricks of the barbiturate pentobarbital aboard his boat while hundreds of kilometres off the Oregon coast.
Prosecutors had asked the judge to sentence Stirling to more than seven years in exchange for a guilty plea on one count of possession with intent to distribute. Stirling's lawyer had argued that her client was under duress from Colombian drug cartel associates – a mitigating factor the judge admitted during sentencing.
Stirling's arrest came just over a year after he was released from U.S. prison after serving most of a seven-and-a-half-year sentence handed down by a Florida judge in 2013.
Stirling had taken a plea deal in that case too. He was convicted of conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute narcotics, after admitting that he was the master of a vessel carrying 381 kilograms of cocaine and one kilogram of heroin when it was boarded by U.S. authorities off the coast of Colombia.
Stirling's compassionate release was opposed by the United States Attorney's Office, which claimed he remains a danger to the public.
"Mr. Stirling, after serving seven years and being deported to Canada, committed the exact same type of offence not a year later while he was in his 60s," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jared Hager argued.
