Court Briefs
Sex offender to receive psychiatric assessment
John McFadden
Northern News Services
Friday, March 3, 2017
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
A repeat sex offender will be allowed to leave the North Slave Correctional Complex to travel to Alberta for a psychiatric assessment.
Convicted sex offender Bobby Zoe leaves the Yellowknife Courthouse on Feb. 22, 2016. Zoe, who has been in custody since February 2015 has been granted leave by judge Shannon Smallwood to travel to Alberta for a psychiatric assessment beginning May 1. RCMP will escort Zoe on the flight. - NNSL file photo |
Bobby Zoe, 36, appeared in NWT Supreme Court on Monday where judge Shannon Smallwood granted him leave from the jail where he has been held since his last arrest in February 2015. Zoe is scheduled to attend the Bowden Institution in Innisfail, Alta., south of Edmonton, on May 1 where he will be assessed by Calgary psychologist Marc Nesca.
Zoe is to be escorted by RCMP officers on the plane ride south. Bowden is a medium to minimum secured facility. The assessment is expected to last 30 days. It is expected to be done in time for Zoe's dangerous offender hearing July 10.
Zoe was convicted in February of last year of a home invasion and sexual assault.
Court heard that Zoe had snuck into an apartment bedroom downtown and began touching a female victim as she slept in her bed with her partner asleep beside her. The man awoke to her screams and chased Zoe out of the apartment and into a stairwell where the two men struggled before Zoe escaped with cash taken from the apartment. That attack came shortly after Zoe had been released from jail.
He had been serving time for another home invasion - this one in Old Town from October 2013.
Zoe was also convicted in 2012 of a brutal sexual assault on a 23-year-old woman - a complete stranger to Zoe - who was attacked while walking alone on 53 Street in January 2011. Zoe was sentenced to 39 months in prison with time served awaiting trial but was released early for good behaviour after serving less than 18 months of that sentence.
Zoe retained Edmonton lawyer Steven Fix on Jan. 31 of this year. Fix, who works in Yellowknife regularly, had one further request of Judge Smallwood.
"Your honour, Mr. Zoe does not fly well in small planes. He has equilibrium issues and in the past, while aboard a small plane, the plane had to turn around," Fix said. "RCMP do not have the resources to move him to Alberta by ground. Can he fly in a big plane?"
Smallwood did not respond to that request.
Zoe's dangerous offender hearing will determine whether he can be kept in custody indefinitely.
Dangerous offender hearing underway
A dangerous offender hearing got underway in NWT Supreme Court on Tuesday for Noel Avadluk. The 44-year-old man, originally from Kugluktuk, has been held in custody at the North Slave Correctional Centre since 2012 following his second conviction for sexual assault.
Avadluk has a lengthy criminal record, including convictions for assault and theft. The hearing will determine whether he can be imprisoned indefinitely.
Avadluk was convicted in September 2014 of a violent sexual assault in 2012. He was found guilty by a jury of forcing a woman to have sex with him after he pushed her onto a bathroom floor. According to the victim, he then pulled her by the hair into a bedroom where he had sex with her again. Avadluk defended himself at trial without a lawyer. The current hearing will also determine the length of Avadluk's sentence for the 2014 assault. In 2009, Avadluk was convicted of a sexual assault inside a Hay River apartment in the summer of 2007. Court heard he forced his way into a woman's apartment and demanded money before sexually assaulting her. Avadluk was sentenced to 12 months in jail for that crime, in addition to the 18 months he had been held in custody awaiting trial.
The hearing in front of NWT Supreme Court judge Karan Shaner began Tuesday with Toronto forensic psychiatrist Dr. Scott Woodside on the witness stand. He performed a psychiatric assessment on Avadluk at the Centre for Addictions and Mental Health in Toronto. He answered questions from both Crown prosecutor Wendy Miller and Avadluk's lawyer Tracy Bock.
The hearing will determine how much of a risk Avadluk is to re-offend. Woodside told the Avadluk has a history of disobeying the law and that he had spent about half of the last 25 years in jail. The hearing, which adjourned yesterday, is expected to continue in April.
Crown wants sex assault case heard in Yk
NWT Supreme Court judge Shannon Smallwood has reserved her decision on an application from Crown prosecutor Brendan Green to move a sexual assault trial to Yellowknife from Behchoko. Marty Bouvier, 21, was charged with sexual assault and uttering threats after an incident in Behchoko involving a minor. Smallwood has placed a publication ban on any evidence being reported from the change of venue hearing.
Applications to move trials out of communities where the offence has allegedly occurred are relatively rare in the NWT.
Green told the judge that because Bouvier has a large family living in Behchoko and the community has such a small jury pool, it would be difficult to seat a fair and impartial jury. He added that because the alleged victim is a youth, it would be easier for her to testify outside her home community. Bouvier's Edmonton-based lawyer Alexandra Seaman opposed the change of venue application, telling the judge Bouvier has the right to be tried by a jury of his peers.
Seaman said moving the trial carries the potential of alienating the community, a feeling she said many indigenous people already have toward the justice system. It is not yet known when Smallwood will rule on the request to change venues. She will rule on whether the publication ban remains in place on April 5.
Seaman also asked Smallwood to recuse herself from the trial, because of the information on Bouvier revealed during the change of venue hearing. Smallwood refused to step away from the case.
