Nunavut court: RCMP cell conditions violate Charter

A young Igloolik man who pleaded guilty to crimes committed during a series of drunken rampages should serve only one day in jail plus time served because police violated his Charter rights by holding him in excessively harsh conditions, Justice Earl Johnson of the Nunavut Court of Justice ruled last month.

Joey Aqqiaruq, 20, who was introduced to liquor and pot at the age of four by an uncle, was held in RCMP cells earlier this year.

Police had charged him with mischief, breach of an undertaking and various assaults, attempted assaults and threats on at least five different people in connection with a series of alcohol-fueled incidents related to fights with his girlfriend.

In the first one, on Jan. 6, Aqqiaruq, while drunk, followed his estranged girlfriend into another woman’s house, then slashed her snowmobile seat with a knife.

After she drove to another house, he cut the snowmobile’s cables with a knife and threatened three people with the weapon when they tried to stop him from doing more damage to the vehicle.

On Feb. 25, while free on an undertaking, Aqqiaruq walked into another man’s house and tried to punch him, but missed. Then he smashed a second man’s head with a snowmobile helmet, causing a bloody nose, a black eye and a possible concussion.

Later that evening, he walked into a child’s birthday party and got into a fight with a six-year-old boy.

After police chased, subdued and arrested him Feb. 25, Aqqiaruq spent two days at RCMP cells in Igloolik and about eight days at RCMP cells in Iqaluit.

On March 9, police transferred him to the Baffin Correctional Centre, where he stayed until March 19, when the court again released him from custody on a new set of undertakings.

In a special application to the court, Aqqiaruq said conditions in those police holding cells were so bad, they constituted cruel and unusual punishment under the Charter of Rights.

In an a sworn statement, he alleged that:

• he was given a blanket that smelled of urine and had blood on it;

• he lost 20 pounds because he was denied proper food;

• he became sick because of the unsanitary state of a cell;

• he was denied access to a shower and telephone;

• he was denied access to a doctor for three says after he broke out in hives;

• he was not given medication prescribed by a doctor;

• he was forced to sleep on a concrete floor because he was in a cell with three inmates and only one mattress;

• he was placed in the same cell as an inmate charged with murdering his cousin.

Crown lawyers did not dispute Aqqiaruq’s statement, and Johnson accepted them as fact.

So when the Igloolik man pleaded guilty to various charges Aug. 26, Johnson sentenced him to one day in jail plus time already served in custody, rejecting a Crown submission that the man serve four months in addition to time served.

Johnson gave the man a three-for-one credit for the 10 days he spent in RCMP holding cells, and two-for-one credit for another 11 days spent in custody — a total of 52 days credit.

After that, he relied on the Supreme Court of Canada’s 1999 Gladue decision to reject the Crown’s request for an extra four months jail.

Under the Gladue decision, judges must look at the backgrounds of aboriginal offenders before passing sentence on them.

To do that, he relied on the submission of the defence lawyer, who said that because of Aqqiaruq’s upbringing in Igloolik, “He did not learn the life skills that are taken for granted in the South.”

The defence said Aqqiaruq was abused as a child and raised by babysitters within a family that abused alcohol. When he was four, an uncle who eventually killed himself gave Aqqiaruq alcohol and marijuana.

Because of this, the man developed a substance abuse problem and did not learn how to control his anger.

“Instead, he learned that substance abuse was the norm,” the defence lawyer is quoted as saying in Johnson’s decision.

Johnson also noted that Aqqiaruq is dog-team racer, has a Grade 11 education, has done well since his arrest and “has an excellent chance of rehabilitation.”