Angry in the Great White North
"Get out of jail free" card
Thursday, June 22, 2006 at 01:18 PM

Read other posts by Steve Janke published by the National Post
Leader

This is too subtle for me to understand:

The Supreme Court of Canada, in a judgment sure to spark political controversy, has refused to boost the sentence of one day in jail for a Winnipeg teenager who beat a man to death with a billiard ball wrapped in a sock.

In a 7-0 ruling Thursday, the court said the Youth Criminal Justice Act, as currently written, doesn't allow for increasing a sentence just to send a get-tough message to the public.

That seems to be true. The YCJA is not there to protect society, because society doesn't need to be protected from children:

The YCJA sets out distinct sentencing provisions for young persons which are different in important respects from the sentencing provisions for adults in the Criminal Code. Denunciation, specific deterrence, general deterrence, and incapacitation, which are sentencing objectives for adults under the Criminal Code, are not sentencing objectives under the YCJA.

In particular, the provisions under 718 of the criminal code do not apply to young offenders. For example, 718.1 reads:

718.1 A sentence must be proportionate to the gravity of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the offender.

So for a young offender, a sentence need not have any relation to the gravity of the offense, at least inasmuch as 718.1 is concerned.

There is one exception, 718.2(e), which deals with sentencing adult aboriginal offenders. This one portion of the sentencing guidelines in the Criminal Code is supposed to be considered when sentencing young aboriginal offenders. It's the section that reads "No jail!":

(e) all available sanctions other than imprisonment that are reasonable in the circumstances should be considered for all offenders, with particular attention to the circumstances of aboriginal offenders.

So if you are a young aboriginal who deliberately beats a man to death with a stick, you will not be subject to sentencing in proportion to the gravity of the offence, and in particular, the judge is required, by virtue of your aboriginal status, to make a concerted effort to come up with any sort of punishment that doesn't include imprisonment.

And yes, the case in front of the Supreme Court involved a 15-year-old aboriginal. A drunken young aboriginal who killed his victim slowly:

After exchanging heated words on a downtown doorstep in August 2002, the teen, who cannot be named, followed Chya Raup Saleh, 22, to his car. He smashed one of Saleh's car windows with the hidden billiard ball before using the makeshift weapon to strike Saleh in the head.

Saleh managed to drive himself back to his apartment where he was later found dead. An autopsy showed the cause of death to be blunt trauma to the head.

The teen, now 17, pleaded guilty to manslaughter even though he said he doesn't recall committing the crime because he was too drunk. He was sentenced to 15 months community service and one day in prison.

And what was the argument about?

[Saleh] apparently looked at the killer's sister the wrong way.

What? They weren't fighting about an ancient land claim? Colour me shocked.

Saleh was trying to earn enough money to bring his wife and parents to Canada from Iraq.

Anyone want to take bets on whether this young offender, being given the gift he has by the criminal justice system, will use his second chance, a chance denied to Saleh and the family that depended on him, to turn his life around and become yet another success story for the Youth Criminal Justice Act?

Didn't think so.

Donate to the AGWN Legal Fund
Main Story

Search for more opinions from Canadian bloggers on these related keywords