Court quashes long-term offender status

A Regina man who once met with success in appealing a long-term offender order has again had such an order quashed.

Late last month, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal continued the back-and-forth court battles between the Crown and Justin Lee Piapot when the province’s highest court overturned the man’s second LTO designation. In handing down that designation in the spring of 2016, Regina provincial court Judge Kevin Lang referenced Piapot’s largely uninterrupted criminal record and troubling institutional behaviour, as well as the violent and frightening incident that landed him back in trouble within weeks of the Court of Appeal overturning the original LTO order.

The first designation, imposed in relation to a violent 2010 assault on a 66-year-old man, was overturned by the appeal court in January 2014 when it couldn’t rule out Piapot had acted in selfdefence. The month after the appeal decision, Piapot assaulted an ex-girlfriend.

The month after that, he chased a vehicle occupied by the same woman, a second woman and a child. Court heard speeds reached as high as 110 kilometres per hour on several blocks of icy streets and that Piapot tried to ram the other vehicle, but took off when the woman spotted police and sought help. Police pursued Piapot but stopped after the man, driving as fast as 100 km/h, ran a red light and narrowly avoided a pedestrian.

For that, Piapot received a three-year prison term on top of two years remand credit, along with a seven-year longterm supervision order.

Piapot appealed his convictions and sentence. While the Court of Appeal determined the conviction would stand — deciding Lang ’s findings as to identity were reasonable — it quashed the LTO order and sent the matter back to the lower court for the scheduling of another hearing.

Piapot’s appeal on that count revolved around the test Lang used to assess future risk, Piapot arguing the judge incorrectly based his decision on risk to commit any type of offence, rather than simply violent ones. The wording of the relevant Criminal Code section does not specifically use the term “violently” in reference to risk of reoffending, leaving the appeal court to rely on “legislative intent” and a sprinkling of previous findings by Canadian courts.

In terms of legislative intent, the court found lawmakers — in the forging of acts like the one springing from Bill C-55 dealing with dangerous and long-term offenders — intended the law to target those at a high risk of violently reoffending. And, while few court cases have addressed the issue specifically, those that have linked the finding of high risk to reoffend to violent offending.

Turning to the evidence of the forensic psychiatrist who completed the assessment on Piapot for the LTO hearing, the Court of Appeal was left with questions. “His testimony about his report left it unclear as to whether Mr. Piapot’s risk of reoffending included a substantial risk of violent reoffending rather than a risk of reoffending more generally,” the appeal court’s decision reads.

While Lang questioned the psychiatrist on that issue, the appeal court found Lang’s later comments to counsel showed he wasn’t convinced the law “required that the risk be one to reoffend violently,” but rather could also apply to “perpetual offenders” — amounting to an error in law.

The decision was written by Justice Ralph Ottenbreit and was made unanimous by Justices Neal Caldwell and Peter Whitmore.