It was only supposed to take 10 or 15 minutes. A 17-year-old boy who gets by "sofa-surfing" with friends who have homes, according to defence lawyer Paul Blais, had put together a trifecta of petty crime that sent him to Brookside Youth Centre for a couple of nights and he wanted to plead guilty.
Justice J. Peter Coulson was curious, however. He was immediately interested in the fact that he had a lone teenager in his courtroom halfway through a Friday afternoon. There was no one laying claim to the boy, neither family nor a Children's Aid Society worker, and the judge wanted to know why. Coulson noted that he could waive the requirement under the Youth Criminal Justice Act that the teen have a caregiver in addition to a lawyer to oversee his interests, "but I'm a little concerned," he told Blais, who was assisting the youth as Legal Aid duty counsel.
Blais talked with the teen privately, at the judge's request, and reported back that the boy had been taken into care by the CAS years earlier and then placed with his grandmother, who Blais said had died when the boy was about eight. After that he was taken in by more distant relatives, but the defence lawyer said they've effectively disowned him since he got into trouble in March. Court staff confirmed that the teen's relatives had received notification of his March charges, but there was no indication they'd been served notice of the most recent offence, possibly because it had only happened two days earlier.
Regardless, Blais suggested the teen is estranged from his remaining family and he held little hope of getting them to come to the courthouse. Coulson wasn't reassured by the additional information and he was loathe to just sentence the boy and dump him back on the street. Blais and assistant Crown attorney Priscilla Christie were invited by the judge to put their heads together and meet with the judge in his chambers. "It has been said," Coulson told them, "that what comes out of courts is highly dependent on what lawyers put into it."
After the judge left the court room, the court clerk started working the phone and eventually – with the assistance of another court clerk in the downstairs office – connected with probation officer Cathy Trant. Trant accompanied Christie and Blais back to see the judge and then made some calls of her own on the boy's behalf.
When court resumed, Christie told the judge that probation services aren't in a position to find him housing, but she was able to assure Coulson the teen was aware of Kingston's shelters and would be able to check into one of them following his release. She also told Coulson that Trant had made inquiries and was satisfied the boy is still attending an educational program in the city. Coulson was also told that Trant would be coming in on her own time, Saturday morning, to meet with the teen and begin working on a plan to assist him.
Blais added that he'd reviewed the relevant section of the Youth Criminal Justice Act and was satisfied that Kingston Police had done all that they were required to do with respect to notifying the boy's legal guardians of his situation.
Coulson then questioned the teen to make sure he understood exactly what he was pleading guilty to, the sentence proposed and that there was no absolute guarantee he'd receive that sentence. He asked the boy one more time if he was sure he had no other family to care for him. The boy told him there was no one and entered guilty pleas to charges of vandalism, theft from No Frills and stealing a bicycle.
Christie told the judge the first charge was laid March 13 after Kingston Police caught the teen on the roof of 65 Brock St. at 7 p.m., spray painting indecipherable graffiti on a wall. There were actually two teens involved in the spraying, she said, and three more observing. She told Coulson that the cleanup cost Kincore Holding Ltd., which owns the building, $100.
Five days later, the boy was arrested a second time, after he was spotted by an employee of No Frills looking around and then slipping a can of Red Bull energy drink into his pocket. When police questioned him, Christie said he told them he was thirsty and had no money. Finally, on April 16, he was arrested and jailed for the theft of a bicycle from the garage of a home on Schooner Drive, on the city's east side.
Coulson was told that the occupant noticed the teen in front of his house on a bicycle and the 17-year-old approached him and asked for directions to downtown Kingston, which the man found odd. When the boy rode off and the occupant decided to check his property, Christie said, he noticed that his garage door was open and realized his son's $450 bike was missing. He got into his car and went after the cyclist, caught him and retrieved the bicycle undamaged and without any resistance. Then he called Kingston Police.
Christie said officers found the teen not long afterwards at Tim Hortons. He told them he'd had a job interview, she said, and that he'd had a problem with the gears on his own bike, so he walked into the man's garage and helped himself.
Christie recommended probation and Blais urged Coulson to team that with a conditional discharge, both of which the judge accepted after ascertaining that discharge was available under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. He placed the boy under the supervision of a youth worker for 12 months, ordered that he participate in any assessment and counselling deemed necessary by his youth worker and ordered him to keep probation services informed about where he's living in the future.
Before that happened, however, Coulson told the boy "you get the second-last word," and asked if there was anything he wanted to say. "Not a thing, your worship," the boy replied using the address for justice of the peace instead of a judge. As Blais was stage-whispering the correct form, however, Coulson interjected his own correction, quipping that it's "your honour; it affects my pension."
The judge noted that the only loss from the three crimes related to the graffiti. "You realize other people have had to spend money to clean it up," he told the teen, then added "I don't suppose you've got $100."
"I've got five bucks back at Brookside," the boy responded brightly, drawing a short chuckle from Coulson, who told him he probably needed that money more than the building's owner. Before letting him go, however, Coulson told the teen that he owed some gratitude to Blais and Christie. Because of his situation, the judge told him he could have been looking at several more days at the youth centre in Cobourg, but "thanks to the efforts of these people, we're letting you out at the beginning of a warm, sunny weekend."
Sue Yanagisawa
24 April 2008
