Latest news with #Gladue
Calgary Herald
2 days ago
- Calgary Herald
Alberta judge rejects robber's Indigenous identity claims, proposes test for deciding who should and shouldn't get Gladue reports
An Alberta judge is proposing new guidelines for how courts handle people who say they are Indigenous during sentencing hearings, but don't have proof to back up their claims. Article content Last month, Justice Jordan Stuffco of the Alberta Court of Justice sentenced Jonathan Anthony Ninan to 33 months in prison for robbing a Leduc sports bar, after Ninan admitted to pointing a replica firearm at the bar's lone female employee and making off with $12,000 cash. Article content Article content Article content After pleading guilty to a pair of charges, Ninan requested a Gladue report, a pre-sentence document which examines the impacts of government policy towards Indigenous people on an Indigenous person's criminal conduct. Article content Article content While some offenders' claims of Indigenous identity are uncontroversial, Ninan had only the vague sense that his mother — with whom he has had almost no contact since age 10 — had 'some ancestral connection to an unspecified Indigenous community,' Stuffco wrote. Article content 'Although Mr. Ninan endured substantial childhood trauma and intergenerational harm due to abusive and neglectful biological parents, I do not find these factors are connected to Indigeneity,' wrote Stuffco, a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta. Article content 'I find Mr. Ninan is not an Indigenous offender because there was no meaningful evidence, other than self-identification, establishing Mr. Ninan as an Indigenous person.' Article content Article content The decision comes amid ongoing debate over Indigenous identity fraud, including deeper examination of Indigenous identity claims from public figures in government, pop culture and academia. Article content Article content Stuffco did not accuse Ninan of trying to mislead the court, noting the 24-year-old simply knew little about his mother 'due to his chaotic and abusive family history.' Article content Gladue reports Article content Since the Supreme Court of Canada's 1999 decision in R. v. Gladue — the first case to interpret Criminal Code amendments aimed at addressing the over-representation of First Nations, Métis and Inuit people in Canadian prisons — Indigenous offenders have been able to request pre-sentence reports examining their family histories and how government Indigenous policy may have contributed to their criminal behaviour. Article content Gladue and subsequent cases recognized Indigenous people 'endured many generations of unparalleled systemic abuse and discrimination at the hands of all levels of government,' Stuffco wrote, including residential schools, displacement from traditional lands and adoption into non-Indigenous families.
CBC
03-04-2025
- CBC
Edmonton man handed 4-year-sentence for manslaughter in 2013 killing
Social Sharing Ivan Stamp's family waited more than a decade for answers about what happened to him. Stamp was 31 when he was found dead in a wooded area behind a west Edmonton synagogue on June 5, 2013. He was severely injured, and his death was quickly ruled a homicide, but no one was arrested during the police investigation that followed. It took eight years for police to reopen the case, after a witness reported that a man he knew as a local bottle picker named "Moose" said that he'd killed someone. In an undercover "Mr. Big" police operation in 2022, police drew a confession out of Edward Robinson, which he repeated in a formal police interview, according to an agreed statement of facts in the case. Robinson pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and on Wednesday, he was sentenced to four years in prison. With enhanced credit applied to the two years he's already spent in custody, he has about six months left to serve. Stamp's sister, Chantell Stamp, said it's a difficult outcome for the family to process. She hopes to hold a ceremony for her brother and remember him for his humour. "I remember the last time I saw my brother alive, I just had this feeling and I knew I needed to tell him I loved him. And I did," she said. "It's been 12 years — it's time. Time to heal, time to move on." 'Complex and tragic background' In his sentencing decision, Court of King's Bench Justice Kent Teskey found Robinson's actions were "rooted in poverty, addictions and personal insecurity of both food and housing." A Gladue report, which examines the circumstances and history of an Indigenous offender as part of the sentencing process, details Robinson's "fractured" childhood where he regularly witnessed alcohol abuse, and was couch surfing by the time he was a teenager. Now 34, Robinson was 23, and living in a tent in Edmonton's river valley, when he killed Stamp. He admitted that after he'd been drinking with a group that included Stamp, he got jealous because Stamp was talking to his then-girlfriend. Court heard that Robinson led Stamp to a secluded area and knocked him unconscious, then dragged him further into the trees where he kicked and stomped on him, ultimately leaving him on the ground with numerous broken bones and fatal internal injuries. Defence lawyer Rahul Nanda told the court during a hearing last month that Robinson has essentially lived on the streets, struggling with addictions, for his entire adult life. Nanda said in the undercover operation that led to a confession, police supplied Robinson with food and alcohol to gain his trust. His client also has significant mental health issues and a suspected diagnosis of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, which Nanda said could have contributed to impulse control issues in the "spur of the moment" assault. "This is the crux of what intergenerational trauma has done to Indigenous people in this country," Nanda said. He asked the judge to consider a sentence of no more than five years. Crown prosecutor James Rowan argued for 10 to 12 years in prison, saying it was a case of gratuitous violence with no provocation "other than a sense of entitlement that no one ought to be talking to his girl." Teskey landed on a four-year sentence, concluding that Robinson's crime was serious, but his "complex and tragic background" significantly diminishes his moral culpability. Probation aimed at addressing housing, medical needs Robinson's sentence also includes a year of probation, with the judge imposing specific conditions for him to work with social agencies to seek housing, income support and medical treatment, including an assessment for FASD. "Probation is designed to assist with rehabilitation, but before this accused can begin on this path, there are basic human needs that must be addressed," Teskey said. "Basic issues like access to a telephone, bus fare, a safe place to sleep and a full stomach are issues that this offender must resolve before we have any hope of dealing with his complex history of trauma and addictions." During last month's sentencing process, Chantell Stamp read a victim impact statement in court. "Not knowing what happened to my brother, or who, was something that haunted me over and over. Finally, my family and I will have peace," she said. "Thank you, Mr. Robinson, for setting our hearts free, including yours. I forgive you." Teskey told the victim's family members in court that it was important to hear about Stamp as more than "somebody who simply died behind a synagogue." Extending forgiveness "took a great deal of character and integrity," he said. "I hope Mr. Robinson understands what that means."
CBC
25-03-2025
- CBC
Sentencing hearing for disgraced Cree medicine man shows 'breathtaking impact' of sexual assaults
Warning: this story discusses sexual assault. A Saskatoon prosecutor says that Cecil Wolfe's sexual assaults over nine years had a "breathtaking impact" on his victims and community. "He breached a significant position of trust," prosecutor Lana Morelli said Tuesday at Court of King's Bench. "The victims' own trauma was compounded by the sexual assaults by a trusted healer." The 63-year-old pleaded guilty before Justice John Morrall in February to a dozen sexual assaults. Wolfe returned to court this week to hear from his victims and the submissions from Morelli, co-chair Maria Shupenia and defence lawyer Harvey Neufeld. Both the defence and Crown say Wolfe will face time in a federal penitentiary. The defence is asking for a sentence in the four to five year range. The Crown is arguing for 10 years and nine months. Morelli said the case presents unique challenges in terms of finding comparable cases as a reference for sentencing. Medical cases typically lack a spiritual component, while religious abuses lack the medical element. "A medicine man is a symbol of culture, tradition, spirituality — and the healing as a doctor," she said. The defence filed seven letters of support for Wolfe, but Morelli said one of the notes had a troubling aspect. It appears that Wolfe continued to treat at least one woman since his charges, "and this appears in violation of his release conditions." She said the Crown is agreeing that so-called Gladue factors do play into the sentencing submissions — "he had a life shaped by colonialism" — but that his culture had not been stripped away. Further, even though he only went to Grade 3 in his education, "he has 63 years of life experience," Morelli said. "Lack of education does not mean he should not appreciate that his actions are wrong."
CBC
08-03-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Manitoba needs to make changes to address overrepresentation of Indigenous people in jails, experts say
Social Sharing A legal principle intended to ensure systemic factors that impact the background of Indigenous people are considered when they're involved in the justice system is not helping to address their overrepresentation in Manitoba's jails, legal scholars say. "We are still the worst of the worst in the country" in terms of that overrepresentation, said Marc Kruse, a lawyer and the director of Indigenous legal studies at the University of Manitoba's Robson Hall law school. "As long as we don't make any changes, we'll still be the largest representation of incarcerated Indigenous peoples." Under the Supreme Court of Canada's 1999 Gladue decision, sentencing judges must consider systemic impacts on Indigenous people who have committed a crime. The decision also encourages "recourse to a restorative approach to sentencing." In 2021-22, people who identified as Indigenous accounted for 77 per cent of adult admissions to custody in Manitoba, according to Statistics Canada. That's despite the fact Indigenous people made up just 18 per cent of Manitoba's population in 2021. Kruse says courts need to think of "crime and punishment in a different framing" that's more aligned with Indigenous law. "We need to train our judges and our lawyers what is an Indigenous perspective, and really what restorative justice is, because it's not really being exhibited in our case law," said Kruse. A spokesperson for the province said in principle, all offences are potentially eligible for restorative justice — a process which focuses on the rehabilitation of an offender and reconciliation with the victims, and less on punishment. "However, it is rare to divert cases involving significant violence or that are otherwise very serious," the spokesperson said. In violent crimes,"restorative justice would likely only be considered as part of an overall sentencing plan." Manitoba needs Gladue report changes: experts Quinn Saretsky, a consultant who has worked for more than 15 years with people who have interacted with the justice system, says there have been cases in Manitoba where Gladue factors, such as past trauma as a result of colonialism, weren't considered at all when it comes to serious or violent offences. "It's just really frustrating that … people have to be warehoused in an institution and have these really traumatic experiences completely rejected or discounted as contributing to, you know, why they've ended up in a system," Saretsky said. "When people are coming into contact with any system … you can usually look at circumstances, and it's all linked back to colonization and what it's done to our communities." Saretsky has written around 100 Gladue reports, which are meant to provide a court with information to consider in sentencing on how the effects of colonization specifically affect an Indigenous individual. But many Indigenous people in Manitoba charged with a crime can't access a Gladue report due to funding and resource constraints, she said. Instead, probation officers will often include Gladue factors in pre-sentence reports, which frame those factors in terms of a person's risk to re-offend, without analyzing how colonization has led to criminal activity as a result of institutional racism, said Saretsky. Vicki Chartrand, who teaches with the University of Manitoba's department of sociology and criminology, says Indigenous people are overrepresented "at the highest, most punitive level of every facet of the criminal justice system, from policing to over-policing to policing deaths to the courts and sentencing to corrections." But "we never look at how the system itself is implicated in creating that criminal activity, because there's no other choice, or that violence is a part of survival, or whatever that case may be," she said. But a pre-sentence report with Gladue factors isn't the same as a Gladue report, says Peter Kingsley, executive director of Legal Aid Manitoba. "Really, the function of a Gladue report is to give a judge information that helps them understand how the effects of colonization on Indigenous people specifically affects the particular individual, which is very different," said Kingsley. He says combining a pre-sentence report with Gladue factors isn't something that's done in other parts of the country. "To my knowledge, we're the only province that has probation services doing both the Gladue component and the pre-sentence report," he said. "Most provinces do separate them out." In 2023, the Southern Chiefs' Organization, which represents 32 First Nations in southern Manitoba, was one of four organizations that took over the First Nation court worker program from the province. That program helps provide Indigenous people with culturally relevant supports during and after the court process. SCO has three First Nation court workers located across southern Manitoba, according to the organization's website, and began the process of hiring Gladue report writers early this year through a pilot project. Gladue reports serve an important purpose, said Kingsley. "The more information you can get before the judge, the better it is going to be for the client," he said. "The hope is that it [a Gladue report] is going to result in a sentence which takes into account the controllable factors by the client and the societal factors which may have pushed the client one way or another."
CBC
01-03-2025
- CBC
Man convicted of killing Indigenous woman in northern Alberta gets prison release
Social Sharing Nicole Gladue-Weesemat wailed after learning the man who stabbed her mother in northern Alberta a decade ago, then moved her dead body to Manitoba, is out of prison. She says she has been overwhelmed with emotions since Corrections officials told her that 74-year-old Grant Sneesby was freed earlier this month after being granted statutory release. "I haven't cried like this since [police] told us they found her," she said Friday from her home in Edson, Alta., west of Edmonton. She said she misses her mother, Gloria Gladue, and has a hard time forgetting Sneesby's trial. "I'm shaking because it's never easy talking about." Gladue, a member of Bigstone Cree Nation, was last seen in Wabasca, Alta., in October 2015. The remains of the 44-year-old were found in rural Manitoba almost three years later. Sneesby was sentenced in 2022 to 11 years after being convicted of manslaughter and causing indignity to a body. He was credited seven years for time in pretrial custody. A December decision from the Parole Board of Canada says Sneesby's statutory release date was pending and that he was planning to live in a seniors home after his release. A spokesperson said it couldn't confirm the release due to privacy. The law requires federal offenders who have served two-thirds of their sentence to be freed under statutory release. The parole document says Sneesby told his trial he was drinking with Gladue when they got into an argument and he stabbed her in the chest three times with her knife. Sneesby's lawyers argued Gladue was the initial aggressor. The trial heard Sneesby wrapped Gladue's body in plastic, taped both ends and placed her in his trailer. He also destroyed her cellphone, burned her clothing and disposed of the knife. He moved the trailer twice over the next two years before taking her body to a wooded area in Manitoba. He told investigators that he last saw Gladue when she left his home to go to a wedding. Officers learned that no one saw her at the event. In 2018, Sneesby admitted to undercover police officers that he killed Gladue and took them to the place he had left her body. Nicole Gladue-Weesemat said it was difficult to sit through Sneesby's trial and now, with his release, she's worried again. But she said it's important to talk about what happened to heal and remember her mother and other missing and murdered Indigenous women. "We're trying our best to cope and honour her at the same time," she said.
