[Wormius]

Originally Posted by chemgear

Seesh.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada...entifies-metis

Prison sentence cut in half for man who identifies as Métis

He successfully argued that the judge who sentenced him erred in the application of what are dubbed Gladue principles

Saskatchewan’s top court has cut a five-year prison sentence in half for a man Prince Rupert police caught with a handgun, ammunition and methamphetamine because the trial judge didn’t properly consider his Indigenous background and how he was affected by systemic discrimination.

He was not exposed to First Nations culture growing up.

“He identifies as Métis through his maternal great-grandfather. Yet, he ‘does not feel a part of the Métis community and has never been involved in the cultural traditions of the Métis people.’”

The father of four is estranged from the sole long-term romantic partner he’s ever had and “has committed violence against her, which was associated with his substance abuse.”

“He ‘feels once he is in school, everything else will fall into place,’” said the decision. “Yet, the pre-sentence report indicates that ‘his plan to accomplish such includes selling drugs while waiting to be accepted into school and that Mr. Umpherville ‘considers committing property crimes or harming people as worse crimes than selling drugs.’”

An assessment “classifies Mr. Umpherville in the high-risk category to reoffend and states that, when he is compared to the remainder of the Saskatchewan offender population, he was ‘assessed to be at the 98th percentile which means two per cent of Saskatchewan offenders were assessed as having more risk factors.’”

Why did you leave this out?

“Mr. Umpherville’s father was of First Nations descent and a residential school survivor,” said the decision. “His father ‘struggled with addictions to cope with his past’ and died when Mr. Umpherville was nine years old. Mr. Umpherville has no memory of his father, but he believes that he ‘may not have been in so much trouble in his life’ if his father had not passed away.”

Umpherville can only remember “small traumatic snippets” from the first six years of his life, the court heard. “One of these is ‘being in his mother’s home during a party when he was around six years old, where he witnessed his (older) sisters being sexually abused by adult men.’ He ‘recalls experiencing an enraging helplessness because he was too small to help his sisters.’ Mr. Umpherville believes that this was the last time he and his sisters were in their mother’s home, as the children were then apprehended by the Ministry of Social Services.”