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Judge Refuses to Apply Mandatory Sentencing Law
An Ontario Judge yesterday refused to apply mandatory sentencing laws against a man who had been found guilty of contravening a firearms law. Instead of applying a three year minimum sentence, Madam Justice Anne Molloy of the Ontario Superior Court sentenced the man to house arrest.
“In my opinion, a reasonable person knowing the circumstances of this case and the principles underlying both the Charter and the general sentencing provision of the Criminal Code, would consider a three-year sentence to be fundamentally unfair, outrageous, abhorrent and intolerable,” she said.
The ruling sets the stage for what could be an eventual appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada to determine the constitutionality of mandatory sentence provisions.
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