Killer deserves extra credit for harsh pretrial conditions: defence
United Nations gang hitman Cory Vallee should get more than eight years’ credit for the four-plus years he has spent in pretrial custody, his defence lawyer argued at a sentencing hearing Tuesday.
Rebecca McConchie said Vallee has been held in harsh conditions at Surrey Pretrial Centre and deserves extra credit at the rate of two days for every day he spent there awaiting trial. She told B.C. Supreme Court Justice Janice Dillon that inmates at the “notorious” Surrey facility, run by B.C. Corrections, are no longer allowed to have in-person visits with family, even though those visits are available to inmates at the North Fraser Pretrial jail.
“Surrey Pretrial has now ended in-person visits for inmates,” McConchie said. “So accused persons who are waiting for their trial are no longer able to see or touch their loved ones in person.”
She said Vallee even requested and received a temporary transfer to North Fraser in Port Coquitlam just so he could see his mother and grandmother. “It has been something that has been very difficult for Mr. Vallee. He has been in Surrey Pretrial for over four years,” she said. “So this is another circumstance that has made Mr. Vallee’s time in Surrey Pretrial more onerous.”
McConchie told Dillon she didn’t know exactly when Surrey Pretrial changed the policy for in-person family visits.
Public safety ministry media officer Hope Latham told Postmedia that in-person visits at the Surrey facility ended in 2013 when the building was renovated.
“We had the opportunity to implement video technology for visitation, and incorporated this design in the new Okanagan Correctional Centre when it was built four years later,” she said in an email.
“Incorporating video visitation will be considered at other centres when or if they are renovated or expanded.”
Vallee was convicted June 1 of the first-degree murder of Red Scorpion gangster Kevin LeClair, as well as of conspiracy to kill the
Surrey Pretrial has now ended in-person visits for inmates . ... It has been ... very difficult for Mr. Vallee.
Bacon brothers and other Red Scorpion members.
The brazen daylight murder at a busy Langley mall in February of 2009 was part of a bloody turf war between the UN and Red Scorpion gangs that escalated when popular UN member Duane Meyer was shot to death in Abbotsford on May 8, 2008.
While the murder conviction carries an automatic life sentence with no parole for at least 25 years, prosecutors are arguing that Vallee should have to serve at least half of his conspiracy sentence before being eligible for parole.
And they submitted that Vallee should get at least 22 years for the conspiracy conviction.
McConchie argued that Vallee should serve 18 years for the conspiracy count and that he should be granted double time for his pretrial custody instead of the 1.5-to-1 ratio, which is now the norm.
Also during his incarceration in Surrey, “Mr. Vallee had restricted access to certain rehabilitative facilities that he liked to use,” McConchie said.
The issue of Vallee’s parole eligibility on the conspiracy count would come into play only if he successfully appeals his murder conviction.
Vallee has been in a B.C. jail since August 2014. He was arrested in Mexico where he had been hiding out since fleeing the province in late 2009.
Also charged in the LeClair murder is former UN gang leader Conor D’Monte, who also fled Canada and remains a fugitive.