COURT JAILS WOMAN WHO AWOKE FROM COMA

Hobbled First Nations member sent to federal prison because of her condition

B.C.’s top court has approved sending a 50-year-old First Nations woman to prison for a 2009 skid-row killing, even though she only recently awoke from a nearly seven-year coma unable to walk, wash her hair or feed herself.

The B.C. Court of Appeal upheld the two-year federal prison stretch because provincial correctional facilities couldn’t accommodate Annalee Auckland’s many infirmities.

“The issue for this court is whether in his decision to sentence the appellant to two years, the sentencing judge committed an error in principle that impacted the sentence, or otherwise imposed a demonstrably unfit sentence,” Justice John Hunter wrote for the unanimous division. “In my opinion, he did not.”

Auckland’s trial lawyer, Terry La Liberte, was staggered — when she emerged from jail, he fumed, she will probably have lost her place in a Terrace extended-care home.

“The idea we are going to take this native woman and lock her up is ludicrous in the extreme,” the veteran of the Vancouver defence bar complained.

“Our Court of Appeal — the chief justice (Robert Bauman) agreed and Justice Mary Saunders agreed with Justice Hunter’s most superficial analysis of who this person was. I don’t know. When First Nations see this … it’s outrageous.”

Considering Auckland’s Indigenous background, the main issue was whether B.C. Supreme Court Justice Robert Punnett erred by increasing the sentence that would otherwise have been imposed in order to send her to a federal prison.

“In this case,” Punnett said in sentencing, “the evidence is that only a federal institution can address the needs of Ms. Auckland arising from her disabilities, her medical needs, and her Aboriginal status, and thereby address both the rehabilitation needs of Ms. Auckland, and the protection and interest of the public.”

In his view, the principles of denunciation and deterrence required incarceration, but provincial facilities couldn’t accommodate Auckland’s challenges, so Punnett gave her a two-year sentence — the minimum for federal time.

“It’s sort of bittersweet in a way, her recovery,” said Auckland’s appeal lawyer, Eric Purtzki.

“She made this miraculous recovery, and that caused these charges to come back.”

A member of the Kitselas First Nation born in Terrace, Auckland was reared in Duncan after her parents separated by her father, a Mountie.

One of her mother’s boyfriends abused her when she was 10, and she had an abortion at 12. When she was 14, her father was transferred to Port Simpson, near Prince Rupert.

She claimed he sexually abused her, too, and she quit school in Grade 8 when she became pregnant in 1984.

She never held a substantive job, married twice ( both relationships ending in boozy infidelity), and had a daughter who lives in Terrace.

In 2009, Auckland had spent about three years homeless on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside before returning to Prince Rupert with her partner Melvin Christison to continue an indigent life of heavy drinking and crack cocaine.

During a turbulent alcoholsoaked binge in June 2009, she stabbed him four times.

Auckland was charged with second-degree murder, but fell into a coma after a debilitating stroke from the repercussions of HIV. She was deemed unfit to stand trial.

In 2016, La Liberte said she miraculously regained consciousness, was found fit to stand trial and prosecuted. Last year, she pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

Evidence revealed Auckland can get out of bed on her own, stand for short periods of time and take a few steps without assistance, but mostly uses a wheelchair. She requires assistance with bathing and washing her hair, spreading jam and cutting food. She also has a swallowing issue.

In addition, Auckland has slurred speech, a weakness on the right side of her body, limited mobility in her right hand, and an unstable gait.

“She’s a totally different person — if you met Annalee you would just love her,” La Liberte said.

“She’s sobered up now, she’s found Jesus, she is just the nicest little First Nations woman. This is ... I’m laughing because this is so pathetic. (Hunter’s) decision didn’t touch on any of that, if you read it, it is very pro forma — ‘Oh, there’s no legal error here.’ Nothing, no compassion at all for this pathetic human being and the hell she had been through. You tell me one person on the planet who is going to be better off because Annalee went to the federal penitentiary.”

Purtzki was similarly disappointed: “When eight years go by, there’s an old discretion the courts have … to say: ‘Listen, at a certain stage, we say compassion.’ It’s a human process at the end of the day. This woman struggled with an alcohol addiction most of her life, was homeless, and now, for the first time in her life, she has stability, she isn’t drinking any more. These circumstances are unlikely to ever to replicate themselves. This case had zero precedential value.”

Nothing, no compassion at all for this pathetic human being and the hell she had been through.

TERRY LA LIBERTE,

Annalee Auckland’s trial lawyer