Pot-smoking detective's sentence cut  Last updated 05:00
24/11/2013 TROPICAL BARS: Former detective inspector Mark
Franklin is serving a jail term in the Cook Islands for cannabis
dealing.  Relevant offers  South Pacific   A former leading
detective who confessed to using dope to deal with the stress of
some of the country's grisliest murders has had his jail
sentence for cannabis offences in the Cook Islands reduced.
Former Detective Inspector Mark Franklin was jailed for 12
months in Rarotonga in August after pleading guilty to selling
cannabis to an undercover officer in 2010.  The charges arose
out of Operation Eagle, a joint investigation between New
Zealand and Cook Islands police, which resulted in 13 people
facing charges. Sentences handed down by New Zealand judge Colin
Doherty under the Cook Islands' draconian drug laws - Franklin
faced up to 10 years in prison - were derided in Rarotonga as
excessive.  Franklin appealed his sentence on the grounds that
the amounts involved were small and did not a