Nunavut jail guard appeals assault conviction and jail sentence

Former Iqaluit jail guard Michael Bracken is expected in appeals court this afternoon to appeal an assault conviction and his sentence, stemming from an assault against an inmate at Baffin Correctional Institute in 2014. (FILE PHOTO)

Michael Bracken, a former guard at the Baffin Correctional Centre in Iqaluit who was convicted in January of assaulting a “helpless” inmate with “cognitive impairment,” will appeal that conviction.

That’s according to court documents filed at the Nunavut Court of Justice in Iqaluit.

Bracken, 31, from Iqaluit, is scheduled to appear in appeals court in Iqaluit this afternoon, March 9.

Bracken filed a notice of appeal on his own behalf with the court Jan. 25 contesting both his conviction and the 30-day jail sentence imposed by Justice Paul Bychok on Jan. 22.

In appealing the conviction, Bracken wrote in court documents that Bychok “misapprehended the [trial] evidence and made unreasonable findings.”

Bracken also claims Bychok erred in his sentencing decision because the judge “overemphasized general deterrence and denunciation,” and “failed to consider alternatives to incarceration as required.”

In a judgment released Jan. 29, Bychok said Bracken’s assault on the inmate was “a cowardly and gratuitous act of violence unleashed against a helpless victim.”

Bychok said the court must, “send a message to all Nunavummiut, and to all who are put in authority over them, that the dignity of each and every one of us is inviolable.

“Our society’s values do not change behind a prison’s walls, and those persons entrusted with authority must be the standard bearers of those values,” Bychok said in his ruling.

During trial, Bychok found that Bracken first punched the inmate unprovoked in the face, and then, after the inmate had been subdued, “wound up and deliberately kicked [the inmate] violently in the head,” driving the inmate’s head into a wall.

According to court documents, when Bracken’s supervisor confronted the guard about his actions, Bracken said, “Do I look like I give a fuck?”

It was well-known at the BCC that the victim, a repeat offender, was sometimes hard to manage. In Bychok’s judgment, witnesses described the man as “child-like” and “low functioning.”

In his ruling, Bychok wrote of a number of troubling factors in this case.

First, a satisfactory explanation of missing video evidence of part of the assault was never heard in court, Bychok said.

And each of the five guards called to testify during trial at some point tried to excuse and downplay Bracken’s behaviour, the judge wrote.

In handing down a 30-day sentence, Bychok said he took a number of aggravating factors into account, including that Bracken showed “not the slightest bit of remorse,” that Bracken’s behaviour put inmates and guards at risk of an inmate riot, and that Bracken knew the inmate suffered from “cognitive impairment.”

The BCC in Iqaluit has been roundly criticized as unsafe for inmates and guards alike for years, most recently by the Auditor General of Canada in 2015.

Rates of assault at the facility, between inmates and between inmates and guards, tripled in the decade ending in 2013, the auditor general found.

Inmates at the facility recently told Nunatsiaq News that restrictions to their rights, such as daily access to outdoors, are routine and ongoing, and increase tensions inside the facility.

Experts have said the lack of programming at the BCC also likely adds to tension among inmates and between inmates and guards.

Unlike most other Canadian jurisdictions, Nunavut correctional facilities are not subject to external oversight.