Amanda Vaughan
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, November 14, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - Two men were sentenced last week for breaking into a house they were visiting to purchase marijuana.

Gary Taylor, 27, and Wade Sutherland, 30, both appeared in Supreme Court on Nov. 5.

They were scheduled to go to a jury trial, however a last minute negotiation resulted in both parties pleading guilty.

In reading the agreed facts, Crown attorney Christine Gagnon told the court that on the day of the incident in May 2006, the two men visited the victim's house intending to purchase marijuana from him.

After ringing the doorbell and not getting any answer, in what Sutherland's lawyer Michael Hansen called a "lapse of judgement," the two decided to break in.

"Presumably to steal the marijuana," said Justice John Vertes of the two men's motivation.

Once inside the residence, Taylor and Sutherland were "surprised to find the complainant in the house," said Gagnon.

The victim was lying on his couch, and when the two men came into the house, he picked up a baseball bat, but the incident ended with no one being injured, and the victim calling the RCMP.

Gagnon recommended different sentences for the two men, stemming from their differing criminal records and behaviours since their initial arrest.

Taylor has a substantial record, but no related prior convictions, and has followed all of the conditions of his undertaking since his May 2006 arrest, including maintaining no contact with the complainant.

Sutherland, on the other hand, was in custody for nearly a year at the time of sentencing due to two failures to appear in court relating to the case.

He also had 16 prior convictions for break-and-enter, though the most recent was in 1996.

Both of the men had been charged in relation to a four-person home invasion robbery of two diamond cutters from eastern Europe that occurred in January 2004.

The charges against three of the four men, including Taylor and Sutherland, were dropped after the victims in that case left Canada and refused to testify.

In sentencing, Vertes said that the only differing factors between the cases of the two men was in their criminal records, and stated that their sentences should not be too disparate because of it.

He also noted the need for jail time.

Vertes gave Taylor a sentence of 12 months in jail plus three years of probation, and Sutherland was sentenced to two years of jail time minus the 11 months he spent in remand, and three years of probation as well.

"When two men have accumulated lengthy criminal records like these two men have done... imprisonment is required," said Vertes.