In 1992 Billy Burton made the biggest mistake of his life. He had been travelling the World, ran short of money and made the terrible decision to carry drugs out of Manila.
Billy was carrying cannabis and was arrested on the plane on the runway in Manila
and was given a life sentence by a court in Manila. He was told that he could expect to serve eight years before being considered for parole. This figure has risen from eight to twenty, twenty to thirty, then thirty to forty years and still with no agreed release date in sight.
He fully accepts his wrong doing and has spent the past eighteen years trying to survive and certainly not complaining about his lot. He committed a crime and does not offer excuses for this but after 18 long years, we his supporters, feel he has paid the price. If he had committed a similar offence in the UK, he could have expected to have served five years.
In a recent letter from Billy published in the Wetherby News, he said,
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