The case of Gilbert Johnny Moise — who was sentenced to five years in prison Monday for sexually assaulting a woman in 2010 after she was beaten and robbed — is a perfect example of why our provincial jails are so overcrowded.
It took nearly 2 1/2 years to get this case through court while Moise was in remand clogging up a provincial facility when he should have been in a federal prison where there’s more capacity.
Not only that, court delays like these are very painful for victims. And they can result in some cases being tossed out of court for constitutional reasons.
Manitoba’s provincial jails — including the Winnipeg Remand Centre — continue to bust at the seams with inmate overcrowding, forcing guards to work in increasingly dangerous environments.
According to figures obtained from Manitoba Justice, there were about 2,400 adult inmates in provincial jails in mid-February. That’s more than 500 above the system’s design capacity. It’s a potentially explosive situation.
However, the vast majority of those housed in provincial facilities are not sentenced inmates. They’re in custody on remand awaiting the outcome of their court cases.
About seven out of every 10 inmates in Manitoba’s provincial correctional facilities are remand inmates. It’s unbelievable.
Moise was arrested in September 2010 when he was caught sexually assaulting a woman after she was beaten and robbed by a group of thugs. It took 29 months to get this case through the courts. How does that happen?
Court delays of this magnitude aren’t new. But the cumulative effect of them are starting to see more and more inmates piling up in provincial jails. The provincial jail population in Manitoba has more than doubled since 2004.
At some point Manitoba Justice is going to have to figure out why it’s taking cases like these so long to get through the courts. Because not only are these delays making life more dangerous for correctional officers, they’re also making the situation more painful for victims.
Being a victim of crime is bad enough. But having to wait months or years before the perpetrator is brought to justice makes it that much more painful. It’s unfair and it’s completely avoidable.
There are also constitutional problems with these delays that have allowed some criminals to walk free on technicalities.
Under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, people charged with crimes have the right “to be tried in a reasonable amount of time.” There’s no definitive time frame under the Charter to meet that requirement because each case is considered on its own merits and facts. However, the courts have generally viewed delays of eight to 10 months as reasonable.
But there is a limit. And when appellate courts believe there has been an unreasonable delay, they can quash the case and stay the charges.
In a 2009 Supreme Court of Canada case, R. v. Godin — also a sexual assault case that included unlawful confinement — the top court ruled in a 7-0 unanimous decision that a 30-month delay in that case was a violation of the rights of the accused. They concluded the accused was not tried within a reasonable amount of time and they stayed the charges. The guy walked.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw more of that in the future, especially in Manitoba where our court delays are out of control.
Unfortunately there seems to be very little interest by the Selinger government to fix this problem. They’ve paid lip service to it in recent years but they’ve done virtually nothing in concrete terms to fix it.
I don’t know what’s taking them so long.