Convicted murderer’s transfer reversed
COURT: Judge slams ‘problematic’ decision to move Jamie Michael Cliff to maximum-security institution
A double murderer who was alleged to have hired inmates to assault other inmates was treated unfairly by prison officials who transferred him to a maximum-security prison, a judge has ruled.
In November, Jamie Michael Cliff was ordered moved to Kent maximum-security prison after corrections officials deemed him a safety risk at Mountain medium-security prison, where he was serving a life sentence.
A report prepared by security intelligence officers alleged Cliff was involved in arranging the assaults of two other inmates at Mountain prison.
The report also said that Cliff was warned about swearing and threatening inmates and was said to have been “calling the shots” in a scheme whereby sex offenders were being muscled into paying a tax to other inmates.
Prison officials re-classified Cliff’s security risk and claimed to have provided him with a document explaining the reasons for the change.
Cliff denied that he received the document and denied involvement in the assaults and took prison officials to court, claiming that he was dealt with in a procedurally unfair way.
He also claimed that prison officials failed to provide adequate information regarding the alleged assaults.
In his ruling on the case, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Lance Bernard found that the “scoring matrix” used to calculate an inmate’s security classification was not provided to Cliff, despite assurances by prison officials to the contrary.
“The absence of anything other than a bare assertion contradicting Mr. Cliff is problematic,” said the judge, who added that the failure to disclose the document resulted in an absence of procedural fairness and the transfer decision was therefore unlawful.
The judge also took issue with the unnamed and anonymous source information that formed the basis of the allegation Cliff had hired inmates to assault other inmates.
The withholding of the names of the persons he was alleged to have assaulted was “particularly troublesome,” said the judge.
“As a general rule, without disclosure of the date, place and a means for identifying the alleged victim in some fashion, the person who is accused will be unable to know the case against him or her and to respond to it,” said the judge.
The judge ordered that Cliff be returned to Mountain or another medium-security prison.
“We were very pleased that the court recognized the breach of my client’s human right to procedural fairness and we hope that the Correctional Service of Canada will take note following this decision of the importance of dealing with inmates fairly and act according to the law in the future,” said Tonia Grace, a lawyer for Cliff.
In June 2011, a B.C. Supreme Court jury found Cliff guilty of two counts of second-degree murder in the slayings of his former girlfriend Lana Christophersen, 26, and her roommate Andrew Gawley, 21.
In October 2008, an enraged Cliff had repeatedly stabbed Christophersen, believing she had stolen from him and was ratting him out to police.
He entered the bedroom of Gawley, whom he did not know, and stabbed him twice in the neck and then later returned with a gas can, pouring the gasoline over Gawley and setting him ablaze. The fire ignited an explosion in the two-bedroom apartment in East Vancouver.
Cliff, who had 48 prior criminal convictions, including one for manslaughter, received the mandatory sentence of life in prison with no parole eligibility for 25 years.