Tippett sentenced
Sentence for jailhouse obstruction of justice to run concurrent to dangerous offender indeterminate sentence
Stanley Tippett was sentenced to 22 months of concurrent jail time for obstruction of justice, a judge ruled Thursday.
The father of six was sentenced in Cobourg’s Superior Court of Justice by Justice Drew Gunsolus. The 41-year-old was found guilty of the crime in July.
The charge stemmed from Tippett asking a former fellow inmate to lie for him to help him overturn a conviction. Tippett wrote several letters to the former inmate while incarcerated in Central East Correctional Centre in early 2011.
Tippett was in the Lindsay superjail following a conviction in 2009 for kidnapping and sexually assaulting an intoxicated 12-year-old girl. He picked her up on a south-end street in Peterborough and took her to an area behind a Courtice high school in August 2008.
During his incarceration, he wrote the letters while awaiting his appeal. But the recipient of the letters chose not to side with Tippett and turned the notes into police.
Tippett ultimately lost that appeal and was declared a dangerous offender in 2011, receiving the indeterminate sentence. That means he doesn’t get set number of years. Instead, it’s up to the parole board to decide if and when he should be released.
Tippett, who was born in Etobicoke, initially faced the obstruction of justice charge before a jury in Peterborough in 2013. But jurors couldn’t agree and a mistrial was declared.
The case moved to Cobourg before Gunsolus at the beginning of this year. Although all but one of the original letters were somehow lost between now and then, the judge still found Tippett guilty.
Crown attorney Mark Moorcroft asked for three concurrent years and Tippett’s Toronto-based lawyer Lydia Riva was seeking 12 months.
Moorcroft pointed out the extend to which Tippett went to evade the law, writing several, lengthy detailed letters to avoid punishment.
“It wasn’t a spur of the moment decision,” Moorcroft said in court Thursday.
The Crown also highlighted Tippett’s criminal record, which includes breaches and disrespect for court orders.
Riva, on the other hand, brought up Tippett’s condition (Treacher Collins syndrome). It affects his breathing and causes facial deformity. That’s led to a hard life for Tippett, including while in jail. He’s been bullied and forced into segregation. A harsher sentencing would also be harsher on Tippett’s mental health, she said.
The defence lawyer said her client’s attempt to get someone to lie for him was unsophisticated.
“This obstruction of justice had no hope of success,” she said.
The judge landed nearly in the middle of the two lawyers’ requests, finding 22 months adequate.
Those 22 months will be served at the same time as his indeterminate sentence. While they can’t alter the length of his sentencing (because there isn’t one), the parole board will take the obstruction of justice finding into account when they review Tippett for potential release.
Tippett is serving his sentence at Warkworth Institution.