Pathetically Weak Sentences

[Chuck U. Farlie]

Man jailed for killing girlfriend

Man jailed for killing girlfriend

Aug. 17, 2006. 01:00 AM

STEVE RENNIE

STAFF REPORTER

A man who stabbed and killed his ex-girlfriend during a drunken argument was sentenced yesterday to two years in jail for manslaughter.

Shawn Persaud, 22, had been charged with second-degree murder in the February 2005 death of Lydia Gayle, a 24-year-old single mother of a young girl.

But yesterday he pleaded not guilty to the murder charge and, instead, guilty to manslaughter.

The Crown reduced the charge to manslaughter in light of Persaud's level of intoxication when he stabbed Gayle in the chest in the early hours of Feb. 15, 2005.

Persaud and Gayle apparently got into an argument after a night of drinking and listening to music, defence lawyer Ted Kelly said yesterday. A 15-centimetre knife was found in the kitchen and another knife was found near Gayle.

Police called to Persaud's apartment, on Glamorgan Ave. in Scarborough, found Gayle lying in a pool of blood. She was later pronounced dead at Sunnybrook hospital. Kelly said Persaud's parents separated when he was young. His troubled youth included years of alcohol abuse, the lawyer added.

"His childhood experience was far from ideal," Kelly said.

Persaud has a prior criminal record that includes a 2003 charge of assault with a weapon.

Two court officers escorted Persaud into the courtroom yesterday. He wore a black suit and an untucked purple collared shirt, his black hair tightly pulled back into a small bun.

Persaud betrayed no emotion as Justice David Watt ordered him to serve two years in jail followed by three years of probation.

The sentence is in addition to 18 months spent in custody before the trial. That time, typically credited by the courts on a two-for-one basis, makes the sentence equivalent to five years.

A conviction for second-degree murder would have carried an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 10 years.

A friend of Gayle, who declined to give her name, said the killing left Gayle's 9-year-old daughter orphaned. The girl's father died several months before the stabbing, she said.

"Where's the justice? You call this justice?" the friend said.

So this guy, who has a prior for assault with a weapon, gets drunk and kills this woman, and he gets off with 2 years and time served (3.5 years, if full term is served)???!!!!!!

And he got off easy "in light of intoxication"??! Thats ridiculous. With that logical I should stay drunk all of the time, that way I can't be held responsible for any F%&$ Ups I might do.

Does anyone else think that this is a pathetically weak sentence? Do they really think that this pidley amount of time is going to reform him? 2 years in Kingston will likely just make him a more hardened killer, and then there he is, back on the streets to kill again.

What a sorry excuse for a punishment.

[August1991]

The sentence is in addition to 18 months spent in custody before the trial. That time, typically credited by the courts on a two-for-one basis, makes the sentence equivalent to five years.

Why did this case take 18 months to get to trial? The longer time to process cases is the most troubling aspect of our judicial system. Justice delayed is justice denied.

Persaud was sentenced to 5 years but will serve at most 3 1/2 years.

[Hydraboss]

Life. No parole. End of story.

If he wants a lighter sentance, all he has to do is give back what he stole.

Her life.

[Hicksey]

The sentence is in addition to 18 months spent in custody before the trial. That time, typically credited by the courts on a two-for-one basis, makes the sentence equivalent to five years.

Why did this case take 18 months to get to trial? The longer time to process cases is the most troubling aspect of our judicial system. Justice delayed is justice denied.

Persaud was sentenced to 5 years but will serve at most 3 1/2 years.

You ask a good question. I have a better one.

Why do we give double time served ???

You want credit for a day served, then serve a day.

We'll never solve the length of punishment problem until we get rid of the nonsensical notion that criminals are as much victims of society as their victims are of them.

[Charles Anthony]

Why did this case take 18 months to get to trial? The longer time to process cases is the most troubling aspect of our judicial system. Justice delayed is justice denied.

You ask a good question. I have a better one.

Why do we give double time served ???

The two issues go hand in hand. Cutting the time served provides some semblance of an incentive on the part of prosecutor to mete out justice promptly.

How else would YOU have it??

[Hydraboss]

Why did this case take 18 months to get to trial? The longer time to process cases is the most troubling aspect of our judicial system. Justice delayed is justice denied.

You ask a good question. I have a better one.

Why do we give double time served ???

The two issues go hand in hand. Cutting the time served provides some semblance of an incentive on the part of prosecutor to mete out justice promptly.

How else would YOU have it??

Is this what "double credit for time served" is for? Really? Prosecutors have rules that dictate the timing and procedures to follow to ensure timely access to justice. But, like every other rule of law in this country, it goes mostly ignored. Whether by virtue of sheer volume in our courts, or by laziness of the prosecution, our countries own guidelines are placed on a back-burner. So how does telling a prosecutor "if you don't get your ass in gear, we'll let the sexual assailant our early" benefit society as a whole? It doesn't.

Quit thinking that criminals should have rights. BASIC human rights only. No more. Although currently they have more rights in this country than I, it's still the wrong way to think.

What would I do? Let's reverse the situation. Are you going to do a crime? First you must understand that you could conceivably sit in jail for three or four years before you even get to trial. If you are found guilty, you will serve your ENTIRE sentance (no exceptions). However, you can get two-for-one meal credit for good behaviour, you can get off of the heavy manual labour chain gang for doing what you're told, and you can NOT get put in solitary if you don't fight, do drugs, or have sex with other inmates. I hope this isn't all too touchy-feely for some people, but I guess I'm just too liberal for most people's tastes.

[August1991]

What would I do? Let's reverse the situation. Are you going to do a crime? First you must understand that you could conceivably sit in jail for three or four years before you even get to trial. If you are found guilty, you will serve your ENTIRE sentance (no exceptions).

And if you are found innocent?

Hydraboss, I suspect you would make a different argument if the police came and arrested you for a crime you never committed. Would you accept sitting in prison for four years until you got your day in court? How would you feel if your prison mate got out on bail but poor you didn't have that kind of money?

As they say, a conservative is a liberal who was just mugged. And a liberal is a conservative who has just been falsely arrested.

The two issues go hand in hand. Cutting the time served provides some semblance of an incentive on the part of prosecutor to mete out justice promptly.

The prosecutor (and judge) are civil servants with a fixed salary and increases according to seniority. It is impossible to fire the incompetent or merely slow and lazy ones. How does two-for-one in pre-trial prison time act as an incentive for a prosecutor?

[Charles Anthony]

The two issues go hand in hand. Cutting the time served provides some semblance of an incentive on the part of prosecutor to mete out justice promptly.

The prosecutor (and judge) are civil servants with a fixed salary and increases according to seniority. It is impossible to fire the incompetent or merely slow and lazy ones. How does two-for-one in pre-trial prison time act as an incentive for a prosecutor?

I am giving the prosecutors the benefit of the doubt that they care about their job and that they have a heart when they face the public. At the very least, it leads to people like us asking questions about fairness and demanding swift justice.

I am not pretending that is the deliberate intent of the law. That is why I said "some semblance of an incentive" in my words.

[Hicksey]

Why did this case take 18 months to get to trial? The longer time to process cases is the most troubling aspect of our judicial system. Justice delayed is justice denied.

You ask a good question. I have a better one.

Why do we give double time served ???

The two issues go hand in hand. Cutting the time served provides some semblance of an incentive on the part of prosecutor to mete out justice promptly.

How else would YOU have it??

We have regulations as to how long it should take for a case to get to court and courts have set precedence as to what is fair. So as long as that time frame has not been breached then it should be one for one day. Do double time served after that until the subsequent court appearance when the clock would restart. Any time the defense is the cause for the delay it should be day for day.

[FTA Lawyer]

Why did this case take 18 months to get to trial? The longer time to process cases is the most troubling aspect of our judicial system. Justice delayed is justice denied.

You ask a good question. I have a better one.

Why do we give double time served ???

The two issues go hand in hand. Cutting the time served provides some semblance of an incentive on the part of prosecutor to mete out justice promptly.

How else would YOU have it??

We have regulations as to how long it should take for a case to get to court and courts have set precedence as to what is fair. So as long as that time frame has not been breached then it should be one for one day. Do double time served after that until the subsequent court appearance when the clock would restart. Any time the defense is the cause for the delay it should be day for day.

2 for 1 credit is based almost solely on the fact that pre-trial custody is part of your total sentence...when you are sentenced, you are entitled, by law, to earned remission. That is, provided you behave well you will have your total sentence reduced as an incentive.

During the time you are in pre-trial custody you are not getting earned remission because you are not yet sentenced...therefore, in order to account for that, the convention is to give 2 for 1 credit for pre-trial custody.

Other factors are also included in the analysis, like that on a Remand unit you can't get access to programs or services like you can once sentenced and you are often on 23 1/2 hour lock-up so the time in pre-trial custody is significantly "harder" than once sentenced.

On the issue of giving 2 for 1 credit or not, I've written a couple of posts about it a couple of months back:

Calgary Criminal Lawyers' Weekly

As to typical trial times...

A murder case would have a preliminary inquiry followed by the trial. There are often lots of obstacles to getting all of the evidence organized for trial so it takes time. In Alberta, the Court of Appeal recently re-stated the acceptable time limits as being 3 to 5 months to complete the pre-lim. and another 3 to 5 months to complete the trial where the accused is in custody. Absent extraordinary circumstances, or delay caused by the accused longer than that to get to trial will mean the case will be thrown out as a violation of the accused's Charter rights to trial within a reasonable time.

FTA

[August1991]

FTA,

Your website points out the interesting fact that detainees charged have an incentive to delay going to trial since it means they can bank valuable time against an inevitable sentence.

My point above was more general: the two-for-one rule provides no incentive for judges or prosecutors to expedite cases.

[FTA Lawyer]

FTA,

Your website points out the interesting fact that detainees charged have an incentive to delay going to trial since it means they can bank valuable time against an inevitable sentence.

My point above was more general: the two-for-one rule provides no incentive for judges or prosecutors to expedite cases.

I'd be lying if I said that nobody intentionally delays their guilty plea so that they can build up time at 2 for 1 rather than straight time once sentenced. This is ususally guys who have committed relatively minor crimes who are looking at relatively short jail sentences (most often less than 6 months).

Actual prison time post sentence is significantly easier time to do than remand time pre-trial so most guys who are looking at a few years try to get sentenced as soon as possible.

As to the incentive for judges or prosecutors to expedite cases...I'm not sure how the 2 for 1 rule makes any difference to them one way or the other...and I guess maybe that's all you are saying. Where the incentive exists for prosecutors and judges is in the Charter right to a trial within a reasonable time.

On my website, I wrote a blurb about the Askov decision noting that where cases drag on too long, they get tossed out completely...and in the Askov case it was some 50,000 cases all at once! Believe me, Crowns and the Court are keenly aware every time an adjournment request is made that each bit of delay might ultimately lead to the case being tossed...so they watch such delays pretty closely in most cases.

FTA