Victims of impaired driving need justice: MADD
Posted Jun 30, 2020 06:30:00 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It's a frustration that's not going away.
Sentences handed down for crimes that are well below the maximum allowed.
In the case of Ronald Rees, sentenced to six years in jail following his guilty plea to impaired driving causing death, the maximum sentence would have been 25 years.
“When somebody gets six years, and you see the gap of 19 years, you kind of go 'that gap is too big,'” MADD Canada CEO Andy Curie tells The Mike Farwell Show on 570 NEWS.
“It should be something closer even to the middle.”
He says often times, these same people will get looser restrictions in a fraction of the time due to factors like good behaviour.
Meantime, the family of the person killed — in this case, the family of Leanne Holland Brown, the late Dean of Students at Wilfrid Laurier University — have to deal with their loss for the rest of their lives.
“We're in by no way saying that giving stiffer penalties is going to resolve the impaired driving,” he said, “We know it's not, it's deterrants at the front end.”
“But there needs to be justice for families who have been impacted.”
Rees was impaired by drug on the afternoon of April 24, 2019, when he got behind the wheel and struck Brown while she was walking on a sidewalk in Waterloo.
He was credited with time served, so his jail sentence will finish in about four and a half years.
Following his release, Rees will not be allowed to drive for 10 years.
