A Brampton judge who handed out a conditional, non-jail sentence to a man convicted of his fifth impaired driving offence did not merely make a “clear error,” but committed “a wilful violation of her judicial obligation to apply the laws of this country to the best of her ability,” according to another judge overturning the lower court ruling.
“I view it as an affront to the administration of justice for a judge to choose to knowingly disregard and decline to follow the law that must be applied,” wrote Superior Court Justice Jennifer Woollcombe in her decision released last month.
Woollcombe instead imposed a mandatory four-month jail sentence, which under the circumstances of this offender, is “an extremely lenient sentence,” she wrote, given that LeClaire was under a driving prohibition at the time of his arrest. The Criminal Code requires a minimum sentence of four months in jail for a third and successive impaired driving offence.
According to the facts supporting his guilty plea, LeClaire admitted that on Nov. 27, 2020, at around 8 p.m., he drove the wrong way on Winston Churchill Boulevard in Mississauga with only rims on the passenger side of a Toyota RAV4. Sparks flew from the damaged wheel rim, before the vehicle came to a halt and the driver fled. Police received multiple calls about his swerving vehicle.