A MAN convicted of a shooting has persuaded a judge to extend his sentence and send him to a more severe prison so that he can continue smoking cigarettes.

Angelo Foti, 73, a heavy smoker from Winnipeg, Canada, was so distressed at the prospect of serving time in a non-smoking prison that when a judge sentenced him to 20 months in a provincial jail for shooting a man in the arm following a dispute over a snowmobile, he asked his lawyer to make an immediate appeal. Greg Brodsky, Foti’s defence attorney, asked the judge to increase the sentence by four months so that he could qualify for a cell in a federal prison, which allows inmates to smoke.

Manitoba’s provincial prisons recently banned all smoking by inmates. However, Canada’s federal prisons, where smoking is still allowed, will not accept inmates unless they are serving sentences of at least two years.

Foti’s son, also called Angelo, whose snowmobile was the cause of the dispute which led to the shooting, pleaded with his father to accept the shorter sentence. “Dad, they’re just cigarettes,” he said. “Give them up. Quit smoking. You’ll be healthier. Just take the 20 months.”

But Foti, who runs the Italian Concrete and Excavation building firm, was adamant that smoking was more important to him than freedom and the judge granted his request. He will now serve time in the Stony Mountain federal penitentiary.

Foti was found guilty of aggravated assault, assault with a weapon and pointing a firearm after shooting at two men who had gone to repossess his son’s snowmobile.

He fired a shotgun at Jason Stein, 32, severing a bone in his arm and wounding him in the buttocks and hip.

Despite losing the use of his right hand as a result of the shooting, Mr Stein asked the judge to give Foti a non- custodial sentence.

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