Supreme Court to rule on use of hypothetical ‘invented scenarios’ - that if a sentence would be cruel and unusual punishment for one person, it cannot stand - in sentencing decisions
The use of imaginary people committing made-up crimes will be at the heart of a Supreme Court ruling this week on the constitutionality of mandatory minimum sentences in certain gun crimes.
The country’s top court is to rule on the sentencing of a Lethbridge, Alta., man, Jesse Hills, who shot bullets from a bolt-action hunting rifle into a house, terrorizing a family. The mandatory minimum sentence for discharging a firearm into an occupied place is four years. That process so enraged Justice Thomas Wakeling of the Alberta Court of Appeal that – in a rare burst of judicial outspokenness – he threw down a gauntlet to the Supreme Court of Canada, challenging it to undo decades of rulings on cruel and unusual punishment, starting with a 1987 decision that established the use of make-believe people.
In a separate case also before the court, a five-year minimum for a first offence of robbery with a prohibited weapon is at issue. William Hilbach robbed an Edmonton store using a sawed-off rifle. A majority of the Alberta Court of Appeal struck down the minimum sentence, partly on the basis of three hypothetical scenarios. Justice Wakeling dissented.
Friday’s ruling will be closely watched. The attorneys-general of three provinces and the federal prosecutions department intervened in the case to defend mandatory minimums. Four civil liberties and lawyer groups intervened to oppose them.
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