Marlene Bird is wheeled out of court by her partner Patrick Lavallee on Aug. 30. Photo by Chelsea Laskowski
The man who tried to kill Marlene Bird in Prince Albert will not be receiving a dangerous offender designation.
Leslie Black is responsible for the brutal beating and burning of Bird in June of 2014, which caused injuries that forced the Timber Bay woman into a wheelchair for life and has left her permanently scarred.
On Wednesday, a Prince Albert Judge Stanley Loewen came to a long-awaited decision, reading out his written ruling that he is not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Black is likely to commit an act that violent again. Because of this he is dismissing a dangerous offender application.
The burden was on the Crown to prove a rarely-used provision of the Criminal Code which states someone can be labeled a dangerous offender if the brutality of their offence indicates “the offender’s behaviour in the future is unlikely to be inhibited by normal standards of behavioural restraint.”
While the Crown did not prove the dangerous offender portion, when Loewen read his written decision out in court he said the Crown did convince him that there is “in my view, substantial risk the accused will reoffend” so he is putting a long-term offender designation in place.
Bird’s partner Patrick Lavallee is not in favour of this conclusion, saying it’s “not good to me” because he thinks Black should get out of prison “when Marlene gets her legs back.”
While Bird and Lavallee were not present when the dangerous offender ruling came down, they did arrive in time to find out sentencing arguments will be delayed until September 22.
Lavallee wheeled Bird into and out of court, and says the day in and day out of having to help Bird get through the world has left them with an unfair life.
Bird said even without the dangerous offender status, she knows Black will be in prison for a long time. She said her biggest concern is that he could hurt someone else.
“It’s going to be quite a while but he’s gotta learn not to treat women like that… yeah maybe something will come to his head to think of not abusing women,” she said.
She said she puts her trust in the prosecutor to “do good for me.”
Bird and Lavallee repeated previous court claims that they know people in the penitentiary in Prince Albert who pose a risk to Black: for that reason, defence has asked for Black to serve his time in a different region.
Loewen says Black will serve a lengthy penitentiary sentence and will be bound by a long-term supervision order, but arguments on how long that will be have yet to come on September 22. The attempted murder conviction for Black is a potential “life imprisonment” offence, Loewen wrote.
Loewen said there is evidence that Black will obtain the intensive treatment he needs in order to be managed in the community, but Black must buck his historical poor performance in managing his risk in the community.
“It seems to me that Mr. Black, even though he has avoided the designation of Dangerous Offender under those provisions of the Criminal Code, that he has anything but an easy road ahead of him,” Loewen wrote.