High court won’t hear key Indigenous case

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This article was published 09/11/2017 (2908 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — The lawyer for the Winnipeg man convicted of ramming police cruisers two years ago says the Supreme Court has missed an opportunity to give Indigenous inmates better access to justice.

“There’s some holes in the law. There’s some confusion around how we treated individuals who fall through the cracks,” said Zilla Jones, who represents 26-year-old Wayne Daniel Rennie.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court announced it wouldn’t hear Rennie’s appeal, which asked the court to clarify sentencing guidelines for Indigenous offenders.

The court rarely explains its decisions in such cases. It only hears a small number of cases that hold national significance or could change laws.

Rennie was sentenced in December 2015 to 30 months in prison for a July 2015 road-rage incident.

That run-in began when an officer in Winnipeg ticketed Rennie for using his cellphone while he was driving a five-ton delivery van. In response, Rennie rammed the van into five parked police cruisers outside the Public Safety Building and drove off.

That prompted a 100-kilometre highway chase that ended just west of Portage la Prairie. Rennie later pleaded guilty to mischief, fleeing police and assaulting an officer with a weapon.

Rennie’s lawyers appealed the convictions, saying he had lost his right to special Indigenous consideration at sentencing because he’d been adopted into a non-Indigenous family.

Indigenous people have a right to what are called Gladue factors, assessments that are either formally written or presented verbally in court that detail how intergenerational trauma may have contributed to the accused committing a crime. They have been part of the courts since 1999, aimed at lowering the number of Indigenous prisoners in the Prairies. They typically include residential schools, foster care and substance abuse.

Court filings say Rennie was born to a mother of “unknown ethnic background” and a Métis father, whom he barely knew, and placed in a white foster home when he was six months old.

Jones said Thursday that she intentionally gave Gladue factors verbally in Rennie’s case, because a written report takes two to three months to complete in Winnipeg.

She also said Manitoba courts often pair Gladue reports with pre-sentencing reports, which tabulate a higher risk of reoffending based on the same factors, such as unemployment, limited social bonds and drug use. She said that can backfire, meaning Gladue reports can end up convincing judges to dole out harsher sentences.

In filings, Jones argued that Manitoba’s appeal court “sidestepped the question” of whether adopted people have a right to Gladue factors, and whether they are hurting, instead of helping, Indigenous people access justice.

Rennie was also charged last month, after police say a man stole a pickup truck, filled it with gas without paying and drove dangerously. He is charged with driving while disqualified and four counts of failing to comply with a probation order relating to the 2015 case. Jones plans to raise Gladue issues in his current proceedings.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca