Talk about your sophisticated consumer. Andre Gravelle, leading member of a local crime family, knows his prisons.

Gravelle was hit with a reformatory sentence of two years less a day Friday for pushing pounds of pot out of a Beach Road trailer.

But the veteran dealer surprised the court by asking the judge to lengthen his sentence — by a single day. After a brief pause, and hearing no objections from the Crown, Justice Robert Reid obliged, and sentenced the lifelong drug dealer to two years in jail.

Afterward, Gravelle's lawyer, Robert Morris, explained the two-year sentence meant his client would move into the federal rather than provincial system, which houses a generally younger and rougher crowd.

"They're older in the penitentiary system. He'll be with his peers, so to speak," Morris said smiling.

It was an odd twist to a lengthy investigation and trial that had more than its share of twists and turns.

Starting in 2011, the RCMP and a team of local police tracked the Gravelle group from Ontario to Nova Scotia to Newfoundland and back for close to 18 months. The project involved dozens of police officers, countless hours of direct surveillance and more than 16,000 electronically intercepted conversations via bugged cars, rooms and cellphones.

Raids in Newfoundland turned up 17 kilograms of marijuana, hash oil and cannabis resin packed into a van and in a spare tire left in a storage locker. A raid of a quartet of trailers parked on scrub land on Beach Road in the city's east end yielded a nascent grow operation with about 240 plants.

Thirteen people — including the reputed boss, Andre Gravelle, his son, brother and a sister — were arrested and nearly 40 charges were laid.

The RCMP announced the project as an example of organized crime trying to muscle into the medical marijuana field, using it as cover to produce pot and feed the black market. They also announced charges that would have designated the Gravelle family and associates as an organized crime group.

Things didn't quite work out that way. The "grow-op" turned out to be legitimately licensed under Health Canada's medical marijuana rules. Six defendants were released outright and their charges dropped. As the cases wound slowly through the courts, many more charges were withdrawn, including the organized crime charge.

A courier pleaded guilty and got an 18-month sentence blending jail, house arrest and a conditional release.

Finally, Gravelle stood trail with two associates — Ronald Welch, 57, and Bradley Huffman, 41, both of Hamilton, and his sister who had been charged with misleading parole officials about her brother's living arrangements.

She was acquitted, but Reid found Gravelle guilty of a single count of trafficking, while Welch and Huffman were guilty of five other drug counts between them.

On Friday, Reid heard final submissions from both sides and late in the afternoon delivered his decisions.

Huffman, a first-time offender was sentenced to 20 months in jail, a number that seemed to shock the small audience of family and friends who'd gathered in the sixth-floor courtroom.

Welch had told the court that he was very sorry for his part in the operation and had announced he was now caring for his elderly father and attending church two and three times a week. He intended to convert to Jehovah's Witness as soon as he'd finished his sentence, his lawyer, Sandee Smordin, told the court.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Citing his four decades of criminal offences, Reid sentenced him to two and a half years in prison. Finally, he sentenced Gravelle to two years less a day, then added one day, at Gravelle's request.

Gravelle walked out of the court while teary-eyed family members cried out: "I love you." Before the doors closed on him, he called back: "See you next week!" and laughed.