Sentencing for a Prince George man who has pleaded guilty to hiding a camera in the women's washroom of a local business was adjourned Monday so the court can seek further clarity over matters raised in a psychiatric report.
Crown counsel is calling for a six-month conditional sentence and two years probation while defence counsel is arguing for a suspended sentence and two years probation for Gary Ernest Payne, 49. The conditions Payne would have to live up to while serving the time are also at issue.
Payne has pleaded guilty to a count of secretly observing or recording nudity or sexual activity in relation to the Nov. 5, 2012 incident in which he concealed a camera in the paper towel dispenser of the women's washroom.
He aimed the camera at the toilet and then spent the next 35 minutes in the adjacent men's washroom watching the images on a smartphone. It came to an end when an employee went into the women's washroom to do some cleaning and noticed something in the dispenser.
She initially thought a child had jimmied it open and jammed something in but discovered the camera when she opened it up, the court was told. Payne immediately left the location but the business's security camera caught his image. The manager recognized him and RCMP arrested him at his home later the same day.
Payne recorded seven women, adjusting the camera after the first one.
In a statement to police, Payne admitted to committing the act and to trying unsuccessfully to doing the same thing the day before. Payne blamed watching internet pornography for giving him the urge to commit the crime.
Much of the hearing Monday was spent wrangling over a misstatement in the psychiatric report which said he had previously been convicted of indecency from a pair of 2008 incidents. In fact he received a conditional discharge. Defence counsel Fred Fatt argued it could make the difference between Payne being rated a low risk to offend or a low-to-moderate risk to offend.
Choosing from the proposals counsel suggested for dealing with the matter, provincial court judge Michael Brecknell opted to summon the psychiatrist to a hearing at a later date so counsel can ask him whether it would have made a difference to his assessment.
