The B.C. Court of Appeal has added two more years to a sentence for a Prince George man who was found with a loaded sawed-off shotgun and a small amount of methamphetamine near a popular Victoria Street coffee shop.
In March, Jamie Noel Racette, 38, was sentenced to four years in jail less two-years credit for time served prior to sentencing. The outcome meant he could serve the term outside jail in the form of a conditional sentence of which six months would be spent at a drug and alcohol treatment centre.
But seven weeks later he went missing from the facility. In mid-May he was arrested in another city and has been in custody ever since.
Meanwhile, Crown counsel had appealed Racette's sentence, arguing in part that the sentencing judge erred in giving an offender who otherwise deserved a term in a federal penitentiary a conditional sentence based solely on time spent pre-sentence custody.
Crown also argued denunciation and deterrence, rather than rehabilitation, should be the paramount sentencing considerations.
Defence counsel agreed Racette's sentence was too light but argued an additional nine months was appropriate. The difference between the Crown and defence positions revolved around how much his aboriginal background reduced his moral culpability.
Racette adult record contains 42 convictions, including a 7 1/2 year sentence issued in 2005 for a series of robberies, two involving firearms. His statutory release was revoked for using drugs, which he admitted receiving from gang members for keeping a drug house "running smoothly."
He was returned to prison and once he completed his term, was issued a recognizance with conditions which he violated by ignoring a curfew and changing his residence without permission.
In October 2013, he was released from custody after serving time for the second offence but failed to report to his probation officer. Later the same month, he committed the first of two "dial-a-dope" offences when he sold a half-gram of methamphetamine to an undercover officer. Racette was not arrested because an undercover investigation was ongoing.
But a few weeks later, in mid-November 2013, RCMP officers sitting in the coffee shop noticed Racette in the parking lot on a bicycle and with a bulge on his back. When he started to cover his face with a bandana, the officers approached him and discovered the shot gun, as well as 0.35 grams of methamphetamine and a cellphone containing text messages related to drug trafficking. Racette was immediately arrested and later sentenced to the conditional sentence.
In issuing that term, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Peter Leask warned Racette that if he failed to live up to the conditions he could end up back in prison and in a decision issued last month and made public Friday, Justice Gail Dickson lived up to that warning when she adopted Crown's position entirely.
Even when Racette's "profoundly tragic" background is considered, Dickson found an additional two years is appropriate.
"The impact of his aboriginal heritage on his moral blameworthiness goes only so far in helping to explain his decision to arm himself with a loaded sawed-off shotgun and carry it into a busy public place while in possession of methamphetamine for the purpose of trafficking," Dickson said. "Further, in its absence, these circumstances combined with such an extensive criminal history and a firearms prohibition, would justify an even weightier custodial sentence."
