Man guilty of two assaults not dangerous offender, court rules

A man who committed two brutal assaults in the Chilliwack area has had his dangerous offender designation and indeterminate jail sentence overturned on appeal.

In May 2011, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Arnold-Bailey declared Ryan Joseph Walsh, now 31, a dangerous offender following his convictions for two aggravated assaults four years apart.

The first incident occurred in 2004 after Walsh, 18 at the time, had attended a Halloween house party with friends.

As the party was breaking up, he and his friends were outside and some of them began to vandalize a truck.

When the truck owner, Garry Wilson, came outside to investigate, there was a confrontation between one of Walsh’s friends and a house guest of Wilson.

Walsh reacted violently to the situation, taking a hammer he’d been using to try to light fireworks and striking Wilson, 60, over the head two or three times.

Wilson suffered serious and lasting injuries.

The second assault happened in 2008 and involved a confrontation between two groups — Walsh and some of his friends, and a man named Bradley Yarrow and some of Yarrow’s friends.

Walsh used a knife to stab Yarrow in the back. Walsh earlier had his head smashed through a truck window by one of Yarrow’s friends. Without prompt medical treatment, Yarrow’s injuries would have been life-threatening.

On his appeal of the dangerous offender ruling, Walsh argued the trial judge had failed to establish the two offences in question involved a pattern of repetitive behaviour in which the crimes were remarkably similar.

In a split decision, two members of a three-judge panel of the B.C. Court of Appeal found that the judge had erred in her analysis of the legal requirements in the case.

B.C. Court of Appeal Justice Elizabeth Bennett, writing the majority ruling, said that the 2004 assault was “seriously dangerous” and violent, with no real motivation and far exceeding any proportional response.

“The second incident, in my view, is not remarkably similar, and is qualitatively quite different,” said Bennett, noting that after Walsh had his head smashed through a window he and his friends “not surprisingly” had pursued the attackers and confronted them again.

“While it certainly would have been better had Mr. Walsh ‘turned the other cheek’ and contacted the police rather than take matters into his own hands, his violent act on the second occasion was very different than the first. It was a retaliatory response to a very unusual situation.”

Bennett ordered the case be sent back to court for Walsh to be given a determinate jail sentence.

Justice David Tysoe agreed with Bennett’s ruling.

In her dissenting reasons, Justice Gail Dickson found the trial judge had applied the correct legal test in finding the requisite pattern was “clear and easily identifiable.”

Although some of the similarities the judge noted were superficial, others were essential elements of a “distinct and individualized” pattern that allowed her to confidently predict Walsh was a risk to re-offend, said Dickson.

Both incidents involved “sudden, wholly excessive” assaults with weapons committed while in the company of peers and precipitated by Walsh becoming involved in disputes between others out of a profoundly misguided sense of justice or loyalty, she added.

“In addition, both incidents involved multiple acts of unrestrained violence, were intended to cause at least severe physical injury and, in fact, caused very considerable physical harm that could have resulted in death.”