BY KEITH LACEY
A Manitoulin Island lawyer and his client blasted the media and probation services for lacking compassion, neglecting to fairly and accurately report their case, and failing to consider how media reports affect people.
Defence counsel James Weppler told the court Wednesday his client, Louie Pitawanakwat, was threatened with death inside Sudbury District Jail after he pleaded guilty in October to numerous serious charges. Inmates read about his case in the newspaper.
His criminal acts included breaking and entering into a woman?s home, and wielding a butcher knife in front of her three young children.
Despite their pleas and Pitawanakwat?s promise to turn his life around, enough is enough, said Justice C. Bruce Noble of Ontario Superior Court of Justice, who sentenced the ?clearly intelligent? career criminal to three years in
a federal pentenitary.
Pitawanakwat has more than 50 criminal convictions and crimes of violence have escalated over the past few
years.
He was raised in two dysfunctional families, kicked out of his home at age 12, and lived in more than a dozen foster homes before turning to crime.
He was one of 11 children whose father was murdered when he was 11 years old.
Despite Pitawanakwat?s difficult life and promise to seek counseling to change his criminal behaviour, this was an extremely serious incident where three young children were terrorized by a stranger holding a knife, said Noble.
Pitawanakwat said an article in Sudbury?s daily newspaper endangered his life.
One inmate became aggressive and told him he had children of his own and couldn?t accept what Pitawanakwat had done and was going to beat him up, he said.
A second inmate also threatened him with violence, he said.
Both men insisted he leave the ?range? of cells in the jail and eventually he went into protective custody where he
was isolated from the general population. He?s spent the past several weeks alone in his own cell, said
Pitawanakwat.
Before sentence, Pitawanakwat told the judge impressions made by a probation officer included in a pre-sentence report and media portrayal of him was inaccurate.
?You guys got me all wrong,? he said. ?This pre-sentence report...there are so many things that are all wrong...it?s not fair to be judged like that.?
The report didn?t detail how he straightened out his life for two years in 1995 after receiving a five-month sentence for using a broken beer bottle against two men who attacked him with a knife in a racially motivated attack in downtown Sudbury, said Pitawanakwat.
?I promised myself I would never come back,? he said.
He realized he would have to stop abusing alcohol and marijuana and he did, stopping for more than two years and staying out of trouble, he said.
He got back in touch with his aboriginal culture, started attending sweatlodge ceremonies and joined native drumming, singing and dance groups, he said.
Even though he was clean and sober, he got into trouble again.
Words from his aunt and uncle about changing his life around ?came flooding back to me? and he decided over the past two months he?s going to access counselling, quit drinking and change his life for good, said Pitawanakwat.
Noble said he considered every word Pitawanakat said in court before rendering his final decision to send him to the penitentiary.
When approached outside court, Weppler would not speak to members of the media about his comments.
When a television news reporter suggested the media only reports what happens inside the courtroom and don?t offer their own opinions, Weppler shook his head and walked away.
