Sentencing appeal dropped

The Crown has dropped its appeal to have Mary Deschenes’ nine month conditional sentence for manslaughter overturned and lengthened.

The 41-year-old fatally stabbed her common law husband Gilles Bergeron on April 23, 1999, in Iqaluit. She completed her nine-month sentence in December 2001. Crown launched an appeal within a week of Justice Robert Kilpatrick’s March 9, 2001, sentencing.

At the time of sentencing, Justice Robert Kilpatrick called the homicide a “single act of outrage and powerlessness,” which Deschenes committed after months of physical and mental abuse.

Crown originally appealed the sentence asking that “a greater sentence fitting the circumstances be imposed,” court records say.