A B.C. Supreme Court justice will ponder whether a non-jail sentence is viable for a woman who killed a man helping to pave the Trans-Canada Highway near Nanaimo over four years ago.
B.C. Supreme Court justice Douglas Thompson previously found Christianne Marie Boufford, 53, guilty of dangerous driving causing death and dangerous driving causing bodily harm in the incident where Raymond Ferguson was killed. Nick Barber, Crown counsel, and Jerry Steele, defence counsel, made submissions at the Nanaimo law court on Tuesday, Jan. 6, with Thompson saying he needed more time to determine a sentence.
Barber asked for a four-year jail sentence citing the severity of the crime. Steele sought a two-year conditional sentence order, to be served in the community under court-imposed conditions, pointing to the fact his client didn’t have a prior criminal record.
Conditional sentence orders are doled out when the accused doesn’t have a record of disregarding court orders and judges deem they won’t be a threat to the community and for sentences of two years or less. There was debate if a conditional sentence order was even an option, with Barber stating that a number of provisions for conditional sentence orders were repealed in 2022. Additionally, he said it wouldn’t be appropriate as a sentence of over two years was needed, while Steele noted it is a jail sentence served in the community.
Ultimately, Thompson said due diligence was needed.
“For me to give some serious thought to [the sentencing] is the question of whether the CSO is an available sentence or not, or whether by imposing that sentence, I would be imposing an illegal sentence, which is something that I want to do some research on,” Thompson said. “Secondly, if it is an available sentence, whether it is an appropriate sentence in this case or not, is something that I need to think about.”
Late on Sept. 23, 2021, Ferguson was part of a Hub City Paving crew, paving part of the highway near Minetown and Kipp roads. He was killed after Boufford drove through traffic control measures and hit him and injured two of his co-workers.
There was a 60-kilometre-an-hour limit at the scene and based on onboard data from Boufford’s car, she was going 79km/h.
Thompson found Boufford not guilty of impaired driving causing death and impaired driving causing bodily harm. The justice previously ruled that blood-alcohol evidence was inadmissible as her charter rights were violated after police failed to advise her of a right to an attorney and a demand for a breath sample at the police station was done under insufficient grounds.
Boufford’s five-day long trial began July 28.
A date for Thompson’s decision is scheduled to be established Monday, Jan. 12, but he told Crown and defence there was a possibility it could come earlier.