La Loche shooter seeking leave to appeal sentence to Supreme Court

SASKATOON The lawyer representing the La Loche school shooter says he will ask the country’s highest court to reconsider a provincial appeal court’s decision to uphold his adult sentence.

The sentence was imposed after the offender pleaded guilty to killing four people almost four years ago.

In a 2-1 split decision handed down at the end of October, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal upheld the trial judge’s decision to sentence the shooter, who cannot be named because the accused was a youth at the time of the offences, as an adult.

Aaron Fox confirmed Tuesday that he plans to seek leave to appeal that decision to the Supreme Court.

He has 60 days to file the request for leave, after which the Crown has 30 days to file its own documents.

Then the court will decide whether to hear the case.

“There is a significant legal issue here, and that is: What do you do when you have an offender who has some significant cognitive and psychological issues? How does that impact on their moral culpability? In this case, we feel strongly that this youth does (have those issues).”

“It can’t detract from the horror of what has taken place; on the other hand, this is someone who, certainly when he was in custody before he was sentenced, responded well to the counselling he did receive and to programs he was able to get into. I think there’s hope.”

In an interview, Fox said the decision was based “in large part” on Appeal Court Justice Georgina Jackson’s dissenting opinion, which concluded the trial judge erred by allowing the seriousness of the offence to “basically be determinative” on the issue of the accused’s level of culpability.

A sentencing hearing in 2017 painted a picture of the shooter as a quiet teen who struggled in school. Experts pointed to cognitive challenges, but could not definitively say if there was a mental disorder present.

Fox said he expects to file the request for leave before the end of December.