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Woman Sentenced For Drug Trafficking
posted (February 26, 2013)
31 year-old Elvia Dominguez, resident of Biscayne Village, is at prison tonight after she was convicted of drug trafficking today in the Magistrate's Court. In August of last year, at about 10:30 p.m., police were on mobile patrol in the Conch Shell Bay area, when they searched a taxi, with two occupants, Dominguez, and a male driver. The officers searched the taxi and the driver, but they didn't find anything illegal. However, when they searched Dominguez, they found a black bag which contained 112 grams - or 3.95 ounces - of cannabis inside her sling bag. She was arrested and charged with drug trafficking.

Today in court, when Dominguez was given a chance to defend herself, she denied the allegations. She told the court that that on that day, she went to the Municipal Airstrip and heading back home, she caught a taxi. She said that another man caught the taxi earlier with her but he was dropped off in the Conch Bay area, a short while before police stopped and searched them.

She told the Chief Magistrate Smith that all she knew that she had in her purse was a big butcher knife, but no marijuana, and she didn't know how it got in there.

But the Chief Magistrate Smith, after looking at all the evidence, found that she couldn't accept her version in explanation, and as a result, she found Dominguez guilty. Chief Magistrate Smtih sentenced her to pay the mandatory fine of $10,000, two thousand of which she had to pay up front or spend 6 months in prison. She was ordered to pay the balance by January 30, 2014, or spend 3 more years in prison.

She wasn't able to pay that $2,000 upfront so she was taken to prison today to start serving out her sentence.

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