US Insanity -
Canadian Gets
One Year For Illegal Entry
8-7-5

BANGOR, Maine (AP) - A Canadian man who entered the United States to visit his dying mother in Massachusetts was sentenced Friday to a year and a day in prison for illegally entry after he'd been deported.

Joseph Russell Taylor, 47, of New Glasgow, N.S., was sentenced in U.S. District Court.

Taylor's lawyer, Stephen Smith of Bangor, asked Judge John Woodcock to sentence his client to the eight months he had been held at the Piscataquis County Jail awaiting resolution of his case.

Assistant U.S Attorney James McCarthy recommended the sentence the judge imposed.

"This is a difficult case . . . because it's such a human case," Woodcock said in denying Smith's motion. "It reflects the obligation children feel toward their parents and, in particular, the obligation a son feels toward a mother who's dying and needs him. What he did is fully understandable, but as a matter of law, it is not excused."

Taylor was arrested on Oct. 14, 2004, at the Calais border when inspectors with U.S. Customs and Border Protection boarded the bus he was on. In a conversation with border agents, Taylor denied that he had ever lived in or been convicted of a crime in the United States, according to court documents.

Taylor was deported to Canada in 1995 after he was convicted of drug charges in Providence, R.I. Since then, he has been forbidden from re-entry without permission.

His mother, Phyllis Taylor of Attleboro, Mass., died on Nov. 28 at age 75.

On Friday, four of Taylor's siblings and his wife urged Woodcock to sentence him to time served.

"Our family should bear some of the responsibility for his crime," said Taylor's sister, Jo-Ann Baillargeon of Cumberland, R.I. "She was sick for a very long time. She couldn't talk, but cried when she saw his picture. We begged him to come home."

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