Nunavut court ruling highlights jail guards’ workplace dangers

A Nov. 3 court ruling from Justice Earl Johnson in the case of Iola Lucassie shows the kind of risks Baffin Correctional Centre guards can face when dealing with aggressive inmates. (FILE PHOTO)

If you want to know how difficult it is to work as a guard at the Baffin Correctional Centre in Iqaluit, just read a Nov. 3 “reasons for judgment” released by Nunavut Justice Earl Johnson in the case of Iola Lucassie, a BCC inmate.

According to those documents, released by the Nunavut Court of Justice Nov. 5, Lucassie faced a couple dozen charges stemming from incidents that cover a broad time frame from late 2013 to early 2015.

All those charges were related to alleged assaults and incidences of uttering threats alleged to have occurred while Lucassie was in custody — most of them at BCC, but two allegedly occurred in RCMP cells in Iqaluit and two on a plane when the inmate was being transferred to British Columbia.

He pleaded not guilty to some charges during court proceedings in Iqaluit in mid-September. Johnson reserved his decision on those not-guilty pleas to Nov. 13.

Lucassie pleaded guilty to the remainder of the charges but for some of them, he had sought convictions on lesser charges because he disputed the facts.

So Johnson released his rulings on those facts Nov. 3 with his reasons.

The eight-page judgment offers a glimpse into a number of altercations between Lucassie and various authority figures tasked with managing his life in custody.

Johnson summarizes what happened on Dec. 5, 2013, for example, when Lucassie, suspected of bringing contraband drugs into BCC through a window, was summoned by guards to a secure hallway for questioning.

Despite repeated efforts to get him to the secure hallway, Lucassie refused and eventually removed his socks and shirt and “took up a fighting pose” before three BCC staff, the ruling says.

What happened next left the staff bloodied and bruised and had to be analyzed on closed circuit video in court to determine who caused what injury, the ruling says.

Lucassie’s first punch landed between the left ear and jaw of acting supervisor Thomas Bracken with such force that it dislocated Bracken’s shoulder.

According to court documents, Bracken retreated to deal with his injury while dormitory officer Wade Cooper tried to restrain Lucassie. Cooper ended up getting punched in the face as well.

Correctional Officer Matthew Jewis then entered the fray and the accused punched him too, so hard that Jewis lost his balance and fell to the floor.

Lucassie then picked up a chair and started swinging it at the guards while Jewis was still vulnerable on the floor.

Jewis’s colleague raised his foot near Jewis’s face to protect him from the swinging chair. Blows from the chair landed on various guard’s arms and legs before the accused finally threw the chair at them.

The guards then left the dorm while Lucassie, “went into a lengthy tirade where he kicked walls and lashed out until he ran out of energy.”

In the end, Jewis wound up with a laceration on his head that required stitches.

The accused suggested that it might have been caused by the other guard’s boot.

Johnson said it was difficult to tell from the video just what struck Jewis’s head, but the nature of the injury suggested that it was not from a boot sole but from something with a sharper edge, capable of cutting skin.

“I am satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the chair the accused swung at Jewis caused the laceration,” Johnson wrote.

That’s important because it means the difference between assault and aggravated assault, which carries a stiffer penalty. Johnson found Lucassie guilty of aggravated assault in that instance.

He also found Lucassie guilty of uttering a number of threats toward the guards and their families after the assaults were over and the guards had left Lucassie to rage on in his dorm.

Lucassie was also found guilty of assault for spitting on Manuel Olondriz, a BCC peace officer, in March 2014 through a hatch door where food is served.

The accused admitted he was upset and yelling at Olondriz and suggested that the spit came out incidentally.

Johnson rejected that version of events and said he believed Olondriz. “He was a credible witness and was clearly shaken by what happened because spitting is a grave insult in his Filipino culture.”

Overcrowding, a lack of prisoner segregation and safety of BCC guards were all raised in the 2015 Auditor General of Canada’s audit of Nunavut corrections.

2015 NUCJ 32 R. v Lucassie by NunatsiaqNews