Iqaluit rapist appeals sentence, but to no avail
Nunavut Court of Appeal upholds four-year jail term
The Nunavut Court of Appeal has upheld a four-year federal jail sentence that Justice Neil Sharkey imposed on Lucassie Ipeelie of Iqaluit after Ipeelie admitted to grabbing a woman off the street and raping her. (FILE PHOTO)
Lucassie Ipeelie of Iqaluit, now 26, has failed in a bid to reduce a four-year jail sentence imposed on him last year when he pleaded guilty to pulling a woman off the street in 2012 and raping her behind a house.
The Nunavut Court of Appeal, in a decision filed June 15, upheld a sentence that Justice Neil Sharkey imposed Feb. 17, 2014, after Ipeelie entered his guilty plea and lawyers, armed with an agreed statement of facts, made their sentencing pitches in court.
Police arrested Ipeelie in the early morning hours of Aug. 14, 2012, after they responded to two separate calls complaining a man was attacking women.
In the incident that led to his conviction, Ipeelie grabbed a woman he found walking home from work — described in court documents as a “virtual stranger” — and forced her behind a house.
There, he pushed her to the ground and raped her. Meanwhile, a passerby heard her cries and called police.
Two police officers arrived at around 2:17 a.m. and saw Ipeellie on top of his victim, who was squirming and telling him to stop.
“The police officer who pulled him off could see Mr. Ipeelie’s penis exiting the victim’s vagina,” the appeal court judgment said.
Police said Ipeelie was drunk, with “unsteady balance, slurred speech and bloodshot eyes.”
They took the victim to the hospital and arrested Ipeelie, filing seven charges against him, including breaches of probation orders he was supposed to be observing when he attacked the woman.
He also faced charges of impaired driving and dangerous driving, laid in connection with earlier incidents.
“At the time of this offence he was bound by two probation orders. He had been out of prison for only a couple of months and had been charged with impaired driving during that time. He struggled with alcohol abuse,” the appeal court judgment said.
However, he served only about 10 days in pre-trial detention following his arrest for the 2012 sexual assault.
At a show cause hearing held Aug. 24, 2012, a justice of the peace released Ipeelie on a strict set of conditions after his mother posted a $1,000 surety.
Those conditions included an order that Ipeelie avoid contact with any woman, other than family members, and that at least one of his parents accompany him at all times whenever he left their house.
By the time he appeared in court in February 2014, he had wracked up eight prior convictions on his criminal record, including three assault convictions for attacks on his former girlfriend.
At that time, the Crown told Sharkey that Ipeelie should serve four years in jail, which automatically means incarceration at a federal penitentiary.
His defence lawyer, however, argued for a sentence of two years less a day — which usually means time served at a territorial correctional centre — followed by three years of probation.
Sharkey began his sentencing calculations by assuming a range of six to 10 years, and then worked his way down to four years by applying various mitigating factors.
Those mitigating factors included Ipeelie’s fairly prompt guilty plea and indications that he did well while he was out on bail, when he took steps toward rehabilitation.
He also noted that Ipeelie “had the support of his parents, both solid citizens.”
“He was a skilled mechanic and finished heavy equipment training in 2010. He had worked as a driller, both seasonal and part-time, for five years. He was active “on the land”, which we interpret to mean that he was an active hunter and fisherman,” the appeal court panel said.
But none of that kept Ipeelie from committing violent crimes while drunk.
“The sentencing judge found Mr. Ipeelie’s moral culpability for the offence to be high; he was a man with a clear predilection for crime and violence when drinking, yet he continued to drink. His crime was purposeful, and he ignored the victim’s pleas for help and for him to stop,” the appeal panel said.
But defence lawyer Susan Charlesworth argued Sharkey should have started at four years and then worked his way down, a process that would have led to a two-year-less-a-day sentence.
She also said Sharkey should have done more to acknowledge the principles of the 1999 Gladue decision, which require judges to take the special circumstances of Aboriginal offenders into account.
“Mr. Ipeelie’s counsel observed that in Nunavut the history of displacement of the Inuit is fresh; many people still alive recall living in the traditional way before relocation to current settlements by the federal government. Alcohol abuse is rife in the territory. Aids to rehabilitation are few in comparison to those available in southern urban areas,” the appeal court said.
However, the appeal court panel rejected her arguments and upheld Sharkey’s sentence, saying it is “demonstrably fit given the moral blameworthiness of the offender as well as his degree of responsibility.”
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