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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.