The accused, 41, had 118 previous convictions and harassed ex at women’s shelter, according to judgment
A man sentenced to five years in prison for 17 offences, including harassment and choking his partner, leaving bruises, has had his sentence cut in half by the B.C. Court of Appeal.
The man had 118 convictions before this case. Among them were eight violent offences, 52 property offences, one drug offence, and 25 for breaching orders or obstructing justice, according to court documents.
While committing his latest offences, David Murtagh was in breach of court orders eight times, according to a judgment written by Chief Justice Leonard Marchand and agreed to by Justices Patrice Abrioux and Peter Voith.
Murtagh’s offences included slashing the tires of his partner’s car at a women’s shelter and later blocking her from leaving the shelter in her car, hitting the hood repeatedly with a screwdriver and threatening to further damage her possessions if she didn’t stay with him, the judgment said.
A week later, she ended up inside his home in fear of her safety, it said. A month after that, her teenage daughter called police because he was pushing her mother around inside her home, it said.
About 10 days later, the woman, who wasn’t named, knocked on a neighbour’s door for help. The neighbour watched on her security video as Murtagh tried to drag her away while she was screaming.
Murtagh pleaded guilty. The defence and prosecution recommended 30 months in prison for seven offences, including assault by choking.
The trial judge disagreed, sentencing him to 60 months in prison.
The Supreme Court of Canada had told judges in 2010 not to override joint submissions — unless they are “so unhinged” as to lead “reasonable and informed persons … to believe that the proper functioning of the justice system had broken down.”
In her reasons for rejecting the sentencing submission, the B.C. Supreme Court trial judge said she was concerned it recommended concurrent sentences for unrelated offences — break-and-enter, car theft, and offences relating to intimate partner violence.
She also felt that sentence wouldn’t adequately denounce the crimes or deter the offender.
Murtagh appealed her decision on the grounds that she didn’t give “real consideration” to the benefits of his guilty pleas to the justice system and the public.
The chief justice allowed the appeal and imposed a 30-month sentence.
“In my respectful view, doing so will not cause reasonable and informed persons to lose confidence in our justice system,” Marchand wrote.
He said Murtagh is a member of the Siksika First Nation and “his life has been marred by many of the all-too-common direct and indirect adverse effects of Canada’s colonial and post-colonial assimilationist policies.”
Murtagh began drinking at age 10, using marijuana at 12 or 13 and moved to crack cocaine at 16 or 17 and to methamphetamine at 35, said Marchand.
Because he’s Indigenous, courts must take in account traumatic circumstances that send Indigenous Canadians to jail at a rate disproportionate to their population numbers. The trial judge said she did that, according to Marchand’s judgment.
The trial judge said she doubted Murtagh’s could be rehabilitated.
She said his guilty pleas saved the court’s time and money and spared the partner and her daughter testifying, but aggravating factors were his criminal record, his high risk of reoffending, the fact the victim was a vulnerable intimate partner, and assaults happened in front of her daughter.