British Columbia’s top court has broadened the sweep of a sentencing law meant to reduce incarceration rates among Indigenous peoples, ruling that Indigenous-specific sentencing can be applied even to offenders who have become disconnected from Indigenous communities and are only minimally aware of their heritage.
The decision reduces a five-year prison sentence to four in a case involving an unprovoked, near-fatal stabbing. It is not the first appellate ruling to mention disconnection. Ontario’s top court has taken a similar position, but Alberta’s is on the other side, cautioning against expanding sentencing principles “almost to a level of pure ethnicity.
The offender, David Kehoe, is a Métis man who prosecutors argued had not been aware until recently of his Indigenous background. He was convicted of aggravated assault after he used a kitchen knife to stab a man who had played loud music in the parking lot of an apartment building where Mr. Kehoe lived.
Maybe, just maybe, their Culture/Environment is due for an adjustment.
This article comes out the same day as the funerals of Const. Grzegorz Pierzchala.
get rid of the system and start anew! Without the racial profiling element!
Reservations smuggle tonnes of illegal guns in from the United States, wonder why the PM never mentions this?
how convenient — indigenous - there is going to be a rush in the court system from people who suddenly determined they are indigenous or maybe close to indigenous
Immoral and an affront to justice.
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