Crown won’t appeal conditional sentence for former Mountie
Posted August 24, 2012 3:28 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – The Crown is not going to appeal the conditional sentence handed to a former Mountie found guilty of obstructing justice after a deadly, alcohol-involved crash in Delta four years ago.
Monty Robinson was convicted in late March and handed a 12-month conditional sentence in July after his jeep collided with a motorbike in Tsawwassen in 2008, killing 21-year-old Orion Hutchinson.
Robinson admitted to leaving the scene, having two shots of vodka and then returning, claiming he needed to calm his nerves and struggled with alcoholism.
In her decision, Madam Justice Janice Dillon says Robinson admitted he lied about how much he had to drink at a party before the crash, saying Robinson downed the vodka then returned to the scene to mislead police on his level of impairment, a defence he learned during breathalyzer training.
Neil Mackenzie with the Criminal Justice Branch says there are three main reasons the Crown won’t appeal: He says the conditional sentence of 12 to 18 months was a legal option for the judge, the Crown couldn’t find any legal errors made by the justice and generally, a court hearing an appeal can’t substitute its opinion for that of a trial judge just because it might have handed down a different sentence.
“The Crown has to be able to show that a sentence is demonstrably unfit, and in the circumstances here, taking into account all the factors the Crown concluded that it would not be possible to show that it was an unfit sentence in the circumstances,” says Mackenzie.
“And it’s important to note that the fact that a sentence is different from what the Crown was seeking does not, in and of itself, provide a legal basis for Crown to appeal,” Mackenzie adds. “Crown has to conduct a principled, balanced review of the sentence imposed and we have to closely examine the reasons the judge has given in imposing sentence.”
Shortly before Robinson was sentenced he submitted his discharge papers to the RCMP, ending his career as a Mountie.
