2011-09-29
Raveena Aulakh
It was bleak and drizzly, but it was Robin Henry’s day.
Only he didn’t know it until about 4:15 on Wednesday, when a Toronto judge handed down the sentence: house arrest for 12 months and 24 months’ probation for smashing store windows in downtown Toronto during the G20 summit in June 2010.
But no jail time, none at all.
The shoulders of the former Black Bloc member sagged with relief and he stopped wringing his hands as Judge Andrea Tuck-Jackson handed down the ruling at a Finch Ave. courthouse.
“I hope you have learned a good deal from this,” Tuck-Jackson told Henry. “It strikes me that you have.”
He was the first of the Black Bloc group to be sentenced for G20-related violence.
Henry, a baby-faced 22-year-old chef from London, Ont., faced serious charges: two counts of mischief over $5,000 and one charge of wearing a disguise with intent to commit an indictable offence.
A letter, remorseful and straight from the heart, likely saved him from jail time.
Henry, who pleaded guilty earlier this month, wrote a four-page “essay” to the court explaining why he did what he did, including his involvement with the Black Bloc, his skewed sense of social justice and the realization that he had behaved like a common thug.
He had initially intended to act as a medic during the G20 and equipped himself with cider vinegar and bandanas in case police used tear gas, he wrote in the letter. As pandemonium broke out on the first day of the summit, Henry concealed his face with a mask and joined the mob in the destruction. He smashed double-plated doors at a Starbucks and a Bell store.
He smashed one window with a rock handed to him by someone in the crowd; the other he broke with the arm of a store-window mannequin.
“I was in a mob mentality and behaved like a thug,” Henry wrote in the letter. “I acted in a way that cuts across what I believe is right and correct.”
He surrendered in December when authorities contacted his mother, with whom he lives.
Unemployed and struggling with depression, Henry said he decided to visit his father in Botswana and volunteered at an orphanage for a few weeks in June. He received permission from the court to leave the country.
It changed him and his view of the world, he said in the letter.
Henry’s lawyer, Aaron Harnett, had asked that as part of the sentence his client should continue to work for AIDS orphans in Africa.
The prosecution had sought a jail term of nine to 12 months.
The judge stressed the graveness of his actions but believed his remorse was genuine. She also acknowledged that he was a first-time offender.
“He is young, impressionable, and has strong social justice values,” Tuck-Jackson said.
Henry was also ordered to pay restitution and perform 240 hours of community work.
Dressed in a blue-grey shirt with a silk tie and black trousers, Henry hung on her every word. His father, who had flown from Botswana, sat a few feet away with his stepmother and younger brother.
Outside the court, Henry quietly said “thank you” to Harnett.
While the lawyer was full of praise for Tuck-Jackson’s ruling, he warned that if the federal government’s omnibus crime bill becomes law, there will be minimum jail sentences for indictable offences, including the ones Henry pleaded guilty to.
“What we’ve just witnessed was an extremely careful and sophisticated sentencing in a very difficult case,” he said.
“If Prime Minister Harper’s omnibus, vicious, American-style crime bill goes through, the tools that (the judge) used today to deliver justice to my client and to protect the community — those tools are going to be gone,” Harnett said.
Some G20-related criminal cases have already been dealt with.
Lekang Mdlongwa was sentenced to more than a year of jail in July for torching a police car outside Steve’s Music Store during the summit. Nicodemo Catenacci, involved in the same incident, was sentenced in May to 17 months in jail and ordered to pay $33,733 to the police to cover the cost of the car.
A preliminary hearing is underway at the Finch courthouse for 17 men and women accused of conspiracy.
Meanwhile, Henry must write letters of apology to Starbucks and Bell Mobility.