Jamie Sarkonak: She was killed by a carjacker on meth. Her family deserved to be heard in court

It was the day after Christmas, 2024, and nine-year-old Victoria Desjardins was riding in the car as her mom drove through the Calgary intersection of Southland Drive and Macleod Trail when a Dodge Caravan came careening towards her at 170 kilometres per hour through a red light. The driver, repeat criminal Duane Nepoose, was high on meth and probably also adrenaline — he had just violently robbed the car from its owner and was now evading police. The impact was so brutal that Desjardins couldn’t survive her injuries; Nepoose, however, lived.

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He was sentenced to 10 years’ jail at the end of August, having pleaded guilty to robbery, fleeing police, dangerous driving causing death and three counts of dangerous driving causing bodily harm (Desjardins’ mother and sister were seriously injured, as was another woman in a different vehicle). Six total charges, down from the initial 11. But the sentencing decision wasn’t solely a condemnation of Nepoose’s crimes: the judge also admonished the Crown prosecutor for allowing the victims too much leeway to express their loss.

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Justice Indra Maharaj wrote that the victim impact statements filed in this case were “unusual number, breadth, scope, and content.” Twenty-two were submitted, and of those, 18 were presented to the court. Nine of these, she said, came from direct victims and the parents of one victim, and these were useful. Seven statements came from “aunts, uncles, and cousins of the direct victims,” which she said were less useful. And several more statements were given by “friends of the family,” portions of which had to be disregarded by the court because they “recounted dramatized details of the hospital scene or memorialized the deceased.”

For the most part, the judge didn’t list specific concerns with specific victim impact statements, but it was implied that at least some broke the rules.

The law sets out that victim impact statements must not mention the offender in a way that isn’t relevant to the writer’s loss, must not make unproven allegations, must not make comments about offences for which the offender wasn’t convicted, must not complain about others involved in the investigation or prosecution, and must not suggest a sentence. Courts can ignore parts of victim impact statements that violate these rules.

These limits are indeed important. If everyone tangentially affected by any crime had unlimited airtime to vent their thoughts about the criminal in court, the process would be bogged down with lengthy, largely legally irrelevant hearings that get in the way of other trials that need the courtroom space. And the court does indeed have a role in cooling the human tendency towards mob justice, which would be inflamed if everyone was allowed to show up, say, and call for an offender’s death.

In sentencing Nepoose, the judge explained that the Crown prosecutor must ensure that victim impact statements comply with the law: presumably, if someone strays outside the boundaries, the Crown’s job is to remind them of the rules and require that the writer edit the statement before it’s tendered in court. “Material that is irrelevant, inflammatory, prejudicial, or otherwise (outside Criminal Code bounds) should be removed or excluded before the statement is presented to the sentencing court,” Maharaj wrote.

But Maharaj went even further by admonishing the Crown for not ordering Desjardins’ grieving cousins to condense their victim impact statements into one.

“Three of the cousins of Miss Victoria Desjardins, very young children themselves, presented statements speaking, in their own age-appropriate manner, about the loss of their cousin. While it is clear that they have been impacted, it was also clearly very difficult, and concerning to this Court, for them to present their victim impact statements in such a foreign and adult environment as an open court proceeding,” wrote Maharaj.

“While I accept that these young relatives were genuinely affected, their statements largely addressed the broader family and community impact of the death. In my respectful opinion, that material could have been more appropriately and efficiently presented through a community impact statement by an adult.”

A statement by a babysitter “was also heartfelt but tended toward a memorial,” added the judge, and it “could have properly formed part of a community statement by the extended family.”

Quotes from the actual statements weren’t included in the sentencing decision, so it’s difficult to personally judge, but the judge’s comments raise questions regardless. Why shouldn’t children have the opportunity to express themselves in court when a relative is violently killed by a criminal’s intentional dangerous act? Why shouldn’t a babysitter be able to explain firsthand their devastation in the wake of losing a ward? If the hospital scene still traumatizes the family to this day, why shouldn’t they say so? Concerns about whether the content of a victim impact statement goes outside the rules are one thing, but it’s another to suggest that certain people affected by a senseless loss should have to compile their emotions into one omnibus statement. The Criminal Code doesn’t require it, after all.

The justice system is right to handle sentencing in a rational, careful manner, but it shouldn’t work to downplay the loss of victims, either. Victoria Desjardins was an outgoing, creative girl who loved the outdoors, and she had a lot of family members who were inevitably shaken to the core by the tragedy. The fact that so many people were moved to file victim statements should have been taken as a natural consequence of the devastation Nepoose inflicted upon an entire community. It shouldn’t have been treated as an annoyance.

National Post

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