Judge denies Crown’s motion to jail woman
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/01/2024 (618 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
The federal Crown attorney made an unsuccessful attempt to ask a judge to have a Brandon woman who was arrested during a 2021 drug bust sent to jail, arguing that she was delaying court proceedings.
On Tuesday in Brandon court, a judge declined to detain Catherine Angus, who is on a release order in Brandon while she awaits a sentencing date after pleading guilty to charges for conspiracy to commit an indictable offence and possession of property obtained by crime for the purpose of trafficking.
Angus is also facing a charge of robbery, but that charge has not been proven in court and she remains innocent until proven guilty.
Crown attorney Hugh Crawley asked the judge to revoke Angus’s release order so that she could be held in jail until her sentencing date, which he said had been delayed because Angus had repeatedly not shown up to complete a pre-sentence report that her lawyer had requested before the sentencing could proceed.
He read a timeline of the events of the case to the court.
Angus was charged in relation to Project Debris, a joint police operation spearheaded by the Manitoba RCMP, Brandon Police Service and Rivers Police Service to bust a local drug-trafficking network with ties to British Columbia.
After her arrest, Angus was denied bail, but after her guilty pleas, the Crown agreed to her release to the Behavioural Health Foundation for treatment. The Crown later agreed to vary her release order to allow her to live with her family in Brandon, and to order a pre-sentence report. However, Angus failed to keep numerous appointments to meet with the pre-sentence report interviewer, leading to the report being ordered three separate times.
Angus also came into contact with the criminal justice system again, on Oct. 7, 2023, when Brandon police arrested her for robbery. Police released her on an undertaking, and the Crown attorney for the provincial government confirmed that the police had not reached out to the Crown to get the prosecutor’s opinion on whether to keep her in police custody.
“It’s a situation where the Crown is just becoming sort of utterly frustrated with these proceedings and how they’ve gone on,” Crawley said.
The Crown attorney said that if Angus wasn’t brought into custody, the same pattern of reordering a pre-sentence report and delaying proceedings would occur.
“I just don’t understand how the court could have confidence that if the pre-sentence report is ordered again here today on an out-of-custody basis, that anything other than the history that has repeated itself, now on three occasions, will occur for a fourth [time], and that these matters will simply proceed to languish on like this despite the fact that a guilty plea has been entered well over a year ago on a serious indictable offence,” he said.
Angus’s lawyer, Beth Friesen, told the court that some of the delays were attributed to the pre-sentence report writer not contacting her client with the contact information she had provided, adding that it took time for her client to seek out lawyers for legal advice on pleading guilty.
The defence lawyer said she would not be seeking another pre-sentence report and that a sentencing date could be scheduled.
Friesen indicated that her client would likely pursue a private Gladue report, which would contain information on the unique circumstances of Indigenous persons accused of criminal offences.
Ultimately, associate chief judge Donovan Dvorak decided to not order another pre-sentence report and sided with the defence, allowing Angus to be in the community on her existing release conditions.
“I get that it was the police that released her, but in fairness, I don’t think that means that the Crown can come back and say, ‘you know, somebody else did that, therefore you should reconsider it,’” Dvorak said.
Angus will appear in court for sentencing on April 19.
» gmortfield@brandonsun.com
» Twitter: @geena_mortfield