Two-time teen killer could be free at 25

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/08/2021 (1679 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Justice officials are seeking a life sentence for a teen convicted of murdering two men at a house party on Bloodvein First Nation two years ago.

The 18-year-old man was found guilty by a jury of two counts of second-degree murder in the January 2019 killings of Darrell Fisher, 38, and his nephew Zachary Fisher, 22.

The man was 16 at the time of the killings. Under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, the maximum sentence for a 16-year-old convicted of second-degree murder is seven years, at least three of which must be served in the community.

Prosecutors argued the man should be sentenced as an adult to life in prison. Because he was still a youth at the time of the killings, he would be eligible for parole after serving seven years in custody, not the minimum 10 years required for adults convicted of second-degree murder.

The clock starts ticking at different times, depending on whether the man is sentenced as a youth or adult, Crown attorney David Burland told court Thursday.

If sentenced as a youth, the man would receive no credit for pre-sentence custody. If sentenced as an adult, he would receive credit from the day of his arrest, Feb. 1, 2019. If sentenced today, and assuming he was granted parole at the earliest opportunity, the man would serve only six months more in a custodial facility than if he were sentenced as a youth, Burland told Queen’s Bench Justice David Kroft.

But unlike a youth sentence, if sentenced as an adult, the man would be subject to lifelong supervision under terms of his parole, he said.

“If sentenced (as a youth), he would be in the community with zero supervision by age 25 — for two murders, that would be it,” Burland said.

“To help and encourage rehabilitation and reintegration, there needs to be a mechanism to assist the offender to be successful,” he said. “In this case, the Crown’s submission is that mechanism would be parole.”

To secure an adult sentence, prosecutors must “rebut” the presumption the young offender is less morally culpable than an adult. They must convince a judge that a youth sentence would not be long enough to hold him accountable for his crimes.

Since his arrest, the teen has strengthened his gang ties in custody, actively recruited new members and been involved in a violent escape attempt that resulted in a corrections officer being assaulted with a shovel, Burland said.

Court heard evidence at trial that Darrell and Zachary Fisher arrived uninvited at the party and proceeded to bully the teen, calling him “a little bitch” and goading him to drink more.

Trial testimony was complicated by witnesses who had clear allegiances to the accused, including one woman who initially told police she was the killer and another who testified the victims “deserved to die.”

Prosecutors alleged the teen attacked Darrell Fisher first, by stabbing him with a steak knife four times in the chest, leaving him dead on the porch floor.

Zachary picked up a window frame to defend himself before the boy slashed and stabbed him 21 times. The last stab embedded the knife in Zachary’s ear.

In a later text message to his girlfriend, the teen claimed: “It was them or me.”

While there was evidence the accused had been drinking and using drugs, he was not so intoxicated he didn’t know what he was doing, prosecutors argued. The sheer number of stab wounds showed the teen had the state of mind to commit murder and was not defending himself.

Defence lawyers argued at trial the teen was intoxicated by alcohol, cocaine and meth and believed the victims might kill him if he didn’t respond with deadly force.

It was open to jurors to convict the teen of the reduced count of manslaughter, but their verdict shows they believed he had the required state of mind to commit murder.

The sentencing hearing continues today.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca