AP Photo

If hard criminals do soft time in Canada, as the federal Conservative government insists, then John Virgil Punko seems a poster boy for all that’s wrong with the judicial system. In police jargon, Punko was “a low-level mope”—a full-patch member of the Vancouver East End Hells Angels with a healthy dose of greed and a bad addiction to Percocet. Such vulnerabilities made him a useful target in 2003 when the RCMP launched E-Pandora, a $10-million sting operation aiming at netting the big fish in the East End Angels.