Man’s immigration status wins him slightly shorter sentence

Makes sense when someone has spent most of their life in Canada and thus their criminality was Canadian in origin:

In a recent judgment, Justice Fergus O’Donnell credited a Vietnamese man, Hoang Vu, for the equivalent of just under six months already served and gave him a suspended sentence with three years’ probation.

Considering the crime alone, O’Donnell said, an appropriate sentence would have been six to eight months. That would have made Vu unable to challenge a possible deportation order under the newly passed Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act.

“Mr. Vu left Vietnam as an 11-year-old boy. After two years in an Indonesian refugee camp he arrived in Canada as a 13-year-old boy. He is now a 43-year-old man,” O’Donnell wrote in the decision released this month. “At this point in his life, Vietnam is a foreign country to him.”

The Star was not able to reach O’Donnell or the Crown for comment over the weekend. Vu’s lawyer said he needed to confer with his client before commenting.

Vu, who has 11 prior convictions, had pleaded guilty to a single count of assault with a weapon, a charge to which the defence recommended a sentence of under six months in prison. The Crown had recommended 15 months.

Under the Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act, non-citizens sentenced to terms six months or longer cannot appeal to the Immigration Appeal Division if a decision is made to deport them. Before the new law came into effect this year, that threshold was two years.

Experts said judges do have the right to consider a convicted person’s status when sentencing — but with only a little discretion.

Man’s immigration status wins him slightly shorter sentence | Toronto Star.