The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a four-year mandatory minimum sentence for shooting a gun at a house was unconstitutional at the time.
The nation’s highest court has heard the case of Jesse Dallas Hills, who pleaded guilty to four counts stemming from a May 2014 incident in Lethbridge, Alta.
The accused brandished a baseball bat and fired a big game rifle at a car, smashed the window of an unoccupied vehicle and fired at a house where a couple and their two children were.
Mr Hills argued that the minimum sentence of four years in prison in force at the time for recklessly discharging a firearm in the direction of a house or other building was grossly disproportionate and therefore amounted to cruel punishment and unusual, under the Charter of Rights.
The sentencing judge at first instance agreed and sentenced Mr. Hills to three and a half years in prison.
But the Alberta Court of Appeal overturned the constitutional invalidity of the four-year prison sentence and reinstated that sentence.
In allowing Mr. Hills’ appeal, the Supreme Court agreed that this four-year mandatory minimum sentence was grossly disproportionate. The highest court recalls that a young person could very well unload a paintball gun, for example, in the direction of a house as part of a game, to pass the time or to make a bad shot.
In any case, the Liberal government had already repealed this particular mandatory minimum sentence, among other things, after the hearing of the case in the Alberta Court of Appeal.
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