Cecile Bittern and Marva George wear shirts memorializing their brother Marvin William Felix, who was murdered by youths in 2022, outside the Manitoba Law Courts in downtown Winnipeg on Wednesday.Shannon VanRaes/The Globe and Mail
A Manitoba judge has sentenced a teenager to life in prison for killing three vulnerable, Indigenous adults on the streets of Winnipeg in a series of unprovoked attacks, after determining that the maximum youth sentence would not be enough to hold him accountable for his crimes.
Court of King’s Bench Justice Gerald Chartier ruled on Wednesday that the teenager, who was 15 when he and another youth went on a violent rampage in 2022, “had the moral capacity of an adult at the time of the offences.” The judge found the teen’s actions warranted a rare adult life sentence.
The case is concluding after several high-profile examples of violent youth crime have pushed the issue to the forefront in Canada and triggered demands for tougher treatment of accused young people. Governments have increasingly been responding, with Ottawa last week introducing a bill that would detain youth for a wider range of offences.
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The youth is now 18, but his identity will continue to be protected under the Youth Criminal Justice Act until he decides whether to appeal his sentence, the court heard.
The teenager had faced several criminal charges from the time he was 13 years old. Prosecutors say that he had been released on bail and was living under probation conditions for previous assaults and firearms offences at the time of the fatal attacks. He had escaped a healing lodge where he had been ordered to stay.
Earlier this year, the teenager and his co-accused, who was also 15 at the time of the offences, admitted their actions in an agreed statement filed in court. The other youth will appear at a sentencing hearing in November for two counts of second-degree murder.
The Manitoba Law Courts building in downtown Winnipeg. Justice Gerald Chartier said “none of the three killings were the result of a provocation or a fight.”Shannon VanRaes/The Globe and Mail
The teen sentenced on Wednesday was convicted of two counts of second-degree murder and one count of manslaughter. The judge rejected defence arguments that the teen should get the standard breaks in sentencing that young offenders almost always get.
“The circumstances of the offence indicate the accused engaged in predatory behaviour,” Justice Chartier said during his oral ruling. As he issued an adult sentence, he stressed that “all of the victims were vulnerable people” who suffered severe and fatal head trauma in separate attacks before they died.
The law bans adult life sentences for youth under 18, including homicide, unless prosecutors prove an accused exhibited adult-like levels of maturity in the course of his or her crimes. The statute was passed in 2003 by a Liberal government, with a goal of reducing the country’s then high rates of youth incarceration.
Justice Minister Sean Fraser last week introduced a bail-reform bill that seeks to make the YCJA more punishing for youth accused of some forms of violent crime.
Youth suspects in Canadian homicide cases remain unusual, and a triple murder suspect is exceedingly rare.
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During Wednesday’s sentencing ruling in Winnipeg, the judge highlighted how the teenager unleashed humiliating violence in sequential attacks. “The killings occurred one after the other,” Justice Chartier said. “None of the three killings were the result of a provocation or a fight.”
Among the victims was 54-year-old Marvin William Felix, from the Berens River First Nation, roughly 300 kilometres north of Winnipeg. Video that had been played in court showed that he was sleeping outside a Winnipeg hotel in his wheelchair when the youths approached him and started beating him without warning.
The video footage has haunted his siblings, who still experience nightmares and crying fits, said his sister, Marva George, who travelled to Winnipeg from Berens River for the sentencing hearing on Wednesday. She wore a hoodie with her brother’s image that she and her siblings had made in his honour. It reads: “Forever in our hearts.”
Her brother liked to hunt and fish, she said. After Mr. Felix moved to Winnipeg he often asked his siblings to bring him game from up north so that he could cook food and share it with people he met on the streets.
After the ruling, Ms. George said she is satisfied with the sentencing but it is important that the Manitoba government work to make the province “more safe for other people.”
Another victim of the rampage was Danielle Dawn Ballantyne, a 36-year-old mother of four from Misipawistik Cree Nation. She stood 5-feet-2-inches tall and was found by police dead in her apartment building with extensive head trauma, the judge said.
The final victim was Troy Baguley, 51, who was from Saskatchewan and had recently moved to Winnipeg. Security video footage of that attack showed he was beaten for seven minutes; he died months later.
On Wednesday, the youth, who stands about six feet tall and has acne on his cheeks, listened as he was told he could spend the rest of his life in prison. He said nothing to the court.
Prior to sentencing, defence lawyer Laura Robinson had argued that the teenager should get a YCJA murder sentence that would be roughly equivalent to a 10-year-prison term.
There were several mitigating factors outlined in pre-sentencing reports, including that the youth is Indigenous, suffers from attention deficit and cognitive disorders, and was intoxicated by vodka and Xanax at the time of his crimes.
At a sentencing hearing in July, he expressed regret for his actions.
Court ruled that the accused, who was jailed for three years before trial, cannot seek parole until he serves seven years.