|
BLACK-SHEEP COMMENTARIES by GUTLESS SENTENCE SICKENS Life Sentence Appropriate April 11, 2007 - North Shore News - Vancouver, BC MANSLAUGHTER is not a figure of speech. It is a combination of two words giving finite meaning to an unspeakable act. To be slaughtered is to be killed in a ruthless, pitiless manner. Manslaughter is a cruel denial of life and the essence of being alive, particularly the time we have remaining. With every heartbeat we experience time – time is beyond value, it is our being. Culpable homicide is human behaviour beyond the pale, though, too often, barbaric killers who engage in savage cruelty are treated to a lessening of their culpability in the sterile world of lawyers and cloistered judges. The Criminal Code states that “Culpable homicide that is not murder or infanticide is manslaughter; … and every person who commits manslaughter is … liable to imprisonment for life.” In sentencing convicts who have slaughtered others, today’s judges do not place a premium on the shortened life of the victim nor do they attempt to measure what has been lost, a life so precious, allotted only once on uncertain terms except for the biblical prognostication that it might last fourscore years. On March 7, 2005, a16-year-old criminal, a killer-in-the-making, spent the afternoon and evening getting drunk and unruly in the company of a group of ne’er-do-well friends. When the group was denied public transit, Darcy Darnell Pratt and one of his friends broke into a car, punched out the ignition and drove away only to find that the car was low on gas. Unsuccessful in gassing up at a Shell station Pratt drove on to an Esso station where only one employee was on duty: 24-year-old Grant DePatie. Confronted with suspicious circumstances and a likely “gas and go,” DePatie walked near the car to get the licence number. At the same time, Pratt got back in the drivers seat and, without warning, accelerated away from the gas pump knocking DePatie to the ground and running over him. Entangled in the undercarriage, screaming from the pain and terror of dying, DePatie was dragged and flailed at high speed for over seven kilometers, until what was left of his lifeless and severely abraded naked body was spat out and left on the road. Pratt fled the scene of his crime, rejoined his friends, and went with them to Hope. At some point in this meander he told one of his companions he had killed a man whose death screams could be heard coming from under the stolen car. This frenzied and barbarous killing went beyond being just an extreme encroachment on our society’s values, it denied their very existence, just as Pratt denied Grant DePatie his lifetime. DePatie’s last moments were beyond nightmarish. They must be kept in the forefront of your mind as you try to swallow the fact that punishment of his killer became a coddling and pampering exercise over what would best ensure reintegration in the community. On May 11, 2006, Pratt, professing remorse, pleaded guilty to one count of manslaughter and was sentenced to seven years and three months imprisonment beyond 14 months in pre-trial custody. A hard-done-by Pratt soon shed his seeming remorse and launched an appeal. You figure! On April 3, the Court of Appeal for British Columbia reduced Pratt’s sentence and published a 13-page explanatory judgment available at www.courts.gov.bc.ca/ca/. The appellate reasons amount to an academic thundershower of abstraction; a masterful exhibition of pedantry, demonstrating a chilling adherence to rehabilitation of a barbarous criminal at the expense of a wider view that would have included consideration of never-ending grief and torment of the DePatie family, and widespread public revulsion over a killer’s remorseless savagery. The trial judge’s notional sentence of nine years was reduced to seven years “…in recognition of (Pratt’s) lack of full maturity in circumstances in which he is considered a good candidate for rehabilitation and reintegration into the community. Balancing this is the requirement that the sentence must reflect the seriousness with which the Court and the community view his crime, and it must speak to denunciation and deterrence. … This remains, in the scheme of youth sentencing, a very heavy sentence, but it is not, in (the court’s) view, one that could be said to be crushing to this young person who faces the challenge of atoning for his offence.” (emphasis added) The use of the word “crushing” is absolutely unacceptable and grotesque. It is a stunning example of judicial insensitivity and reveals detachment from reality. Come on now, you high and mighty judges, think about it: a screaming DePatie was being both crushed between the underside of the car and the road surface and flayed to death as a conscience-less Pratt, seated inches away, sped on. You characterized the sentence as very heavy and that it speaks to denunciation and deterrence, yet you failed to say that in a few years your non-crushing sentence will have been reduced to a marshmallow by the Parole Board. To suggest that Pratt “faces the challenge of atoning for his offence” is, in my opinion, about as ludicrous as the trial judge saying that in serving his sentence Pratt will have “paid his debt to society for his crime.” The cornerstone of both the trial judge’s sentence and that of the court of appeal, (if Pratt had been ordered before the court to hear their judgment) ought to have been words expressing the utmost distaste for such a monstrous act of manslaughter. Here’s my version and I would have spoken to him with both barrels blazing: “Stand up Pratt and don’t lower your gaze. Before I impose sentence I must tell you that you are marked forever as an utterly despicable coward. You knew full well that you were dragging a decent man to his death. As you drove away, DePatie had only moments left in his life and his thoughts, punctuated by screams of agony, must have been ‘Oh my God, I’m trapped under the car and it’s going faster and faster! I’m being crushed and ripped apart! You’re killing me! You’re killing me! Stop! Stop! Please Stop!’ Pratt, you sat inches away from your victim knowing that you were brutalizing him beyond the ken of imagination. You snuffed out the life of a decent young man and deprived his mother and father of the richness of seeing him follow in their footsteps, raising a family as they did. You have condemned them to a life sentence of grief and turmoil over the horrific last moments of their son. Your evilness in this senseless killing is beyond the capacity of words to portray. For this killing I sentence you to imprisonment for life. However harsh that may seem to be, rest assured that our system of parole will ensure you will be out and about with your friends after serving only a fraction of this maximum sentence. Whatever time you serve will be a brief interruption in your life, paling into insignificance when compared with the years you denied DePatie.” * * * * The late Willard (Bud) Estey, who retired from the Supreme Court of Canada in 1988, had it right when (as the Vancouver Sun reported in a Jan. 26, 2002 obituary), “he asserted that Canadians are becoming impatient with ‘gutless judges’ who refused to get tough with convicted criminals.” Wallace G Craig – wallace-gilby-craig@realjustice.ca – NS News – April 11, 07 |
|
|
