Friday, July 27, 2012

Mountie Monty Off the Hook

Recently resigned RCMP coporal Monty Robinson will serve no time for killing a young motorcyclist, Orion Hutchinson in Delta, B.C. in 2008.   Evidence revealed Robinson was driving home from a party where he'd downed five beers.   After hitting Hutchinson, Robinson fled the scene of the accident for his nearby home where he took himself out of a manslaughter charge by drinking liquor there before police officers could arrive.  That way it was impossible for the police to prove Robinson had been drunk behind the wheel.

The best the cops could do was charge Mountie Monty with obstruction of justice which is punishable by up to ten years imprisonment.   The Crown argued for a jail term of a few months but the judge, noting that Robinson was a first offender, an alcoholic and aboriginal, let him off with a month of house arrest and a less restrictive 11-month follow on term.

I think it was completely right for the judge to take the first offender/alcoholic/aboriginal factors into account but she ought to have offset that by the facts that Robinson was a veteran police officer who perverted the system to dodge a manslaughter charge.

Robinson is also facing a perjury charge relating to the killing of Robert Dziekanski at the hands of four RCMP officers at Vancouver Airport.

2 comments:

UU4077 said...

I think we need to be careful on this one. Apparently, the motorcyclist was also impared at the time of the accident.

(As for the Robert Dziekanski incident, that was totally disgraceful.)

The Mound of Sound said...

Yes he was but it's been determined that Robinson collided with the bike and, remember, it was Robinson, not the kid on the motorcycle, who raced home to chug a couple of slugs of liquor and thereby spare himself a serious criminal charge and prosecution.