Inuvik man in attempted suicide case should get 5 years in jail, says Crown
A Crown prosecutor wants five years of jail time for a man from Inuvik, N.W.T., who shot at the snow in frustration after being rescued from a suicide attempt.
The man had been drinking with his friends and smoking salvia, a hallucinogenic plant, before he tried to take his own life in 2016.
At the Northwest Territories Supreme Court in Yellowknife on Friday, prosecutor Brendan Green argued that the shots could have hurt someone and that the man's criminal record should be taken into account.
But the man's defence lawyer, Kate Oja, said that five years is excessive.
'I did endanger my friend's life'
According to facts agreed upon by the Crown and defence, the man was in a residence when he used a sawed-off shotgun and prepared to shoot himself.
The gun fired as his friend pushed it away.
That got the man mad, so he shot again — once through the door on his way out of the Inuvik residence, and another time outside into a snowbank.
The man, wearing a white T-shirt and black sweatpants, slumped in his chair for much of the sentencing hearing on Friday, until he stood to speak to the court.
CBC is choosing not to name the man to respect his privacy.
He started by apologizing to his family.
"I've been doing counselling. I didn't really like it at first but … I'm getting somewhere," he said.
"I did endanger my friend's life," he added. "I'm sorry for that."
'Very serious offence': Crown
The man has pleaded guilty to a single count of recklessly discharging a firearm.
"It is objectively a very serious offence," Green told CBC. In addition to the five-year sentence, Green asked for a 20-year prohibition on owning a firearm and for a mandatory DNA sample.
The custody suggested by the prosecution would include credit for time served — the man has already spent more than two years behind bars as the case went through the court system.
Oja, the defence attorney, said that her client should receive acknowledgement for time served and go straight to probation.
Oja described her client as a troubled person who grew up with family abuse, lived in group homes and struggled after his girlfriend died in 2014.
Oja detailed a variety of other cases in other provinces and territories where people were sentenced for discharging a firearm, ranging from four and a half years in what she considered the most serious circumstance, to two or two and a half years for less serious cases.
"At a certain point we do need to pay attention to other jurisdictions," Oja said, adding that the man did "not fire at anyone."
Mandatory minimum excessive: judge
As the case went through the courts, the man was looking at a mandatory minimum sentence of five years for recklessly discharging a prohibited firearm.
However, Oja and another lawyer challenged the constitutionality of that, saying that "reckless" is a very broad term and people shouldn't face lengthy jail sentences if they hadn't intended to harm anyone.
In February, N.W.T. Supreme Court Justice Louise Charbonneau agreed, writing that unless someone shot at a place where they suspected a person might be, then a mandatory minimum was unconstitutional.
Charbonneau reserved her decision on the case for a future date
