Appeal court cuts five years from sentence of man who beat, choked ...

Published May 30, 2023  •  3 minute read

A woman was severely beaten outside Seven Stones Daycare in central Edmonton on July 14, 2021, as her children watched through the front door. Photo by Ian Kucerak /Postmedia, file

Warning: this story contains details some readers may find disturbing, including references to suicide.

A man who brutally attacked a mother outside her children’s daycare will serve four years in prison instead of nine years after Alberta’s top court found a judge failed to properly assess how the accused’s Indigenous background affected his level of culpability.

In a decision released Tuesday, the Alberta Court of Appeal more than halved the sentence being served by Rockie Ryan Rabbit, whose random attack on a woman outside Seven Stones Daycare two years ago shocked Edmontonians.

Rabbit told court he was suffering from methamphetamine-induced hallucinations and believed the victim — a recent immigrant from Eritrea — had killed or kidnapped his daughter. After approaching the woman and looking in her backpack, Rabbit slammed her to the ground and began strangling her with both hands.

Two of the women’s three children, aged six and eight, sobbed uncontrollably as they watched the attack from inside the daycare. Rabbit — who was on release for assaulting his brother — stopped only when police arrived four minutes later.

During Rabbit’s sentencing last year, Alberta court of justice Judge Carrie Sharpe took the unusual step of going above the prosecution’s recommended sentence of six years in prison.

The Alberta Court of Appeal, however, found Sharpe failed to properly apply the principles laid out in the Supreme Court’s 1999 Gladue decision, which requires courts consider the role systemic factors such as discrimination, abuse, alcoholism, drug use and family separation played in an Indigenous person’s offending.

The appeal court said Sharpe was wrong to conclude that Gladue factors — which courts have long said lessen an Indigenous offender’s “moral blameworthiness” — take a back seat in cases of serious violence.

“Sentencing judges must try to understand what influenced an Indigenous offender to act in the way he did,” Justices Jolaine Antonio and Bernette Ho wrote. “(Applying the law) also includes assessing whether one’s instinctive reaction to that conduct would be the same, given the circumstances, if the offender were of a different race, culture, or background.”

“This analysis involves empathy, imagination, and introspection, among other things,” the justices continue. “It imposes on the sentencing judge the difficult task of imagining a different life, and honestly asking how a person — not the world’s strongest or most resilient person — might be affected by such an experience.”

Rabbit comes from Montana First Nation in Ponoka County. According to a Gladue report, his mom, dad, grandparents, aunts and uncles all attended residential schools, and the family has a history of suicide, mental health and substance abuse issues.

“The appellant endured abuse and addictions in his family home … (as well as) poverty, low education levels, disconnection from family and culture, unstable relationships, and depression,” the appeal court wrote.

Rabbit’s family suffered a series of losses beginning in 2020, including three suicides, an overdose and a homicide. Things worsened the next year when Rabbit lost a cousin who he considered his best friend.

“His use of drugs at this time, while unlawful and dangerous, is to some degree explained by his past environment and recent events in his life,” the appeal court wrote. “He did have a history of prior drug use and was described as ‘angry and violent’ when using, but he had never before experienced hallucinations similar to those that precipitated the subject attack.”

“These factors diminish his moral blameworthiness.”

This does not lessen the impact the attack had on the victim and her family, the appeal court added.

Rabbit’s lawyer, Michael Marchen, said his client is “relieved” by the outcome. He noted Rabbit pleaded guilty and said he continues to express remorse for what he did.

Postmedia’s efforts to reach the victim were unsuccessful.

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