This long-awaited Judgment is finally released.

Kudos to counsel Jonathan Rudin, Sarah White and Lee Seshagiri who represented Mr. Cope as the Respondent and especially to Sarah who represented this gentleman all the way from the trial up.

Here is where you’ll find the Judgment on the SCC’s Website

Here are most of the lawyers involved in this incredible effort.

Our client, the Empowerment Council, addressed sentencing where mental health is in issue. The Majority addressed these issues mainly at paras 134 – 149.

The headnote to the Judgment summarizes the Majority’s conclusion on how mental health evidence ought to have been meaningfully considered in this case as follows:

An offender’s mental health disorder can attenuate their degree of moral responsibility where the offender’s mental illness caused or contributed to the criminal conduct. The sentencing judge must also consider how this affects the various sentencing options that will best serve the relevant sentencing objectives. Sentencing a mentally ill offender to a lengthy term of imprisonment that could further degrade their mental state provides little hope of preventing the cycle of reoffending and of sparing the community from further criminal conduct when the offender is eventually released.

In the instant case, the sentencing judge should have linked the mental health factor to the offender’s moral blameworthiness on the aggravated assault offence, but failed to do so. There is no reasonable conclusion on the record other than the offender was seriously struggling with his mental health at the time of the aggravated assault. Furthermore, the sentencing judge did not consider the relevance of the offender’s ongoing mental health challenges to achieving the applicable sentencing objectives, including deterrence and denunciation. In particular, her reasons disclose no consideration of how a lengthy custodial sentence of imprisonment could aggravate the offender’s mental illness and thereby lessen prospects for rehabilitation and specific deterrence This error was further exacerbated by the failure to meaningfully engage with the sentencing circle process. Beyond a passing mention, the sentencing circle process does not feature at all in her reasons, and never in relation to the mental health dimension of this case. The Court of Appeal was therefore correct to intervene and it arrived at a just and appropriate sentence. A sentence of imprisonment was required in this case given the severity and violence of the assault as well as the vulnerability of the victim. The sentence is severe enough to denounce and deter a form of violence that has been overlooked for far too long, while also offering a real chance to address the long-term pattern of offending in this case. There is no basis to interfere with that sentence on this further appeal.

I remain grateful to our counsel team of Carter Martell, Sarah Rankin, Cassandra DeMelo who joined me on this important case. 10 months ago………

For more about the case and its history, here is my previous blog entry when the case was heard

Posted to my LinkedIn here, where I summarized in one sentence and tagged whoever I could.

Congratulations to Jonathan Rudin, Sarah White and @Lee Seshagiri on representing Harry Arthur COPE in the SCC and getting a spectacular result on so many important points of law regarding sentencing of Indigenous persons where the victim is an Indigenous woman or girl, the important role sentencing circles play and how to meaningfully consider mental health evidence in sentencing.

Congrats as well to all the supportive interveners and their counsel, only some of whom can be tagged here.

Jessica Orkin K. R. Virginia Lomax Neha Chugh Anne-Marie McElroy Samara Secter Sarah Rankin Cassandra DeMelo Carter Martell Christa Big Canoe @Emily Hill Maxwell Hill Maija Martin Cassandra Richards Katherine Hensel Adam Wheeler @Naomi Metallic