I'm feeling pretty good about being a journalist today. To the common man, it would seem the courts like journalists, at least more than teachers.
How else can you explain the two court decisions that came out of Saskatoon Sept. 23? In one, Charles Ellwood, a man with a lengthy criminal record, got 3.5 years in jail for attacking Saskatoon StarPhoenix columnist Bob Florence and putting him in a coma. Florence got his skull fractured and a brain injury out of the deal. Not very good, but still alive.
If I was a teacher, I would not feel so good about the second decision. Barry Grosse, 64, a retired principal, was struck while riding his bicycle at 3 a.m. on Saskatoon's drag strip, otherwise known as 8th Street. What he was doing biking on 8th at 3 a.m. was his own business. It was pretty clear by video and eye witness testimony the driver who killed him, Mitchell Rebryna, in his TransAm, was at the least cruising and more likely street racing with a friend in a Mustang.
Having been a young man with a powerful car who lived in Saskatoon when I was the same age of Rebryna, I can tell you that if a Mustang driver and a 1995 TransAm driver are on 8th Street at 3 a.m., side by each, the odds are pretty damned good they're laying some rubber. They sure weren't getting a stick of butter for Grandma to bake cookies.
CBC reported, "Mitchell Rebryna, 22, was originally charged with criminal negligence causing death by street racing. Before the trial however, Rebryna entered a guilty plea to a more general charge of criminal negligence causing death."
He got 26 months in prison.
In the Ellwood case, the StarPhoenix reported, "Judge Doug Agnew said he doesn't know exactly what happened the night Florence received injuries that left him with a skull fracture and brain injury. Florence spent seven weeks in the hospital."
"The assault was unprovoked, unjustified and involved grossly excessive force by any measure," Agnew said. How hitting a man with your hands is any more grossly excessive than a speeding TransAm is beyond me.
Having spent my fair share of time covering court, as well as talking to judges regarding what goes into sentencing decisions, I can see how the court came to this conclusion. You have a long record, you get slapped down harder for additional offences. On the other hand, the StarPhoenix reported, "Queen's Bench Justice Mona Dovell also received 30 character reference letters for Rebryna, which she said was unprecedented in all her years on the bench."
In other words, bad guy gets spanked harder for doing less damage than good guy who kills someone.
On the face of it, that doesn't sound like justice.
There are all sorts of sentencing principles that will have gone into each decision. But to Joe. Q. Public, the simple math doesn't work.
There's no real easy way around this. Laws were brought in to deal with street racing. Why those charges were dealt away, we'll likely never know. Maybe the Crown didn't have a solid enough case. Maybe it was easier to just accept a guilty plea as save the effort of a trial.
Should Elwood have received less time? No. Should Rebryna gotten more? Yes. I don't care how nice a guy he was, he splatted a cyclist across his windshield because of his lead foot. That warrants a lot more than a little over two years. More like 10.
Would two or ten make a difference to the guys who think Gone in 60 Seconds is a lifestyle to emulate? Probably not. But it might look a little more like justice to the guy on the street, the one who isn't racing.
Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected]
