The man who was convicted of abducting his daughter to prevent her from being vaccinated for COVID-19 says he’s already received ample punishment for his offence.
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Michael Gordon Jackson feels he’s been punished enough.
The abduction charge was dated between Dec. 6, 2021 and Jan. 21, 2022. Police found Jackson, who is from Carievale, Sask., and the girl in Vernon, B.C. in late February 2022. Jackson testified at trial that he’d taken the girl, who was then seven years old, in a bid to stop her from being vaccinated for COVID-19.
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In August, prosecutor Zoey Kim-Zeggelaar suggested that after being given credit for time on remand, Jackson should serve an additional 199 days in jail, followed by three years probation and 200 hours of community service.
Jackson’s own submissions were derailed after he alleged he’d experienced “torture” while in jail awaiting trial. Kim-Zeggelaar was granted time to follow up on what Jackson had said, noting a few items needed to be “investigated.”
Jackson’s sentencing hearing resumed in Regina on Monday, but the Crown chose to call no witnesses and ask no further questions of the convicted man.
Jackson took issue with this, asking Court of King’s Bench Justice Heather MacMillan-Brown for time to file evidence on what he says happened to him in jail.
“My thought is, both of you stopped the hearing because you didn’t want the information to get out,” he said, referencing the judge and the prosecutor.
The judge did not grant his request and said a complaint about his treatment in court would need to be submitted through “a different forum.”
“We all know how that goes in this country,” Jackson spat.
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He took issue with the cases Kim-Zeggelaar had presented to support the Crown’s position on sentence, arguing his case is very different.
“The Crown continues to perpetrate a narrative that is so far removed from the truth,” he said.
His comment drew exception from the prosecutor, who said the narrative played out through witnesses in front of a jury that convicted Jackson.
Jackson asked the court to consider the case of Dawn Walker, a Saskatchewan woman who was accused of kidnapping a child, faking their deaths and fleeing to the United States. She pleaded guilty to parental abduction in contravention of a custody order, possession of a forged document, and forging a passport.
Walker was given a one-year conditional sentence and 18 months probation.
“She was heinous in her actions. I was not,” said Jackson, who spent nearly a full year in jail on remand before being granted bail.
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He emphasized that he’d negotiated with the RCMP while he was at large with his child and showed “everybody in the country and the world” that his child was OK when he spoke in an online video.
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These were among the factors Jackson suggested were mitigating in his case.
Kim-Zeggelaar pointed out that Walker’s case is different. Her sentence was the result of a joint submission and there’s no way of knowing how lawyers reached the agreement or about strengths or weaknesses in the Crown’s evidence, the prosecutor said.
Jackson said the Crown was correct in that he has shown no remorse.
He said it is his “God-given responsibility” to protect his daughter from harm and went on to speak about his firm belief that the COVID-19 vaccine is harmful.
“I have been dealt far greater punishment already than jurisprudence can ask for,” Jackson said, having stated that he’s been barred from seeing his daughter and has accrued “massive debt” in addition to the jail time he’s already served.
“The Crown has failed in its argument that further sentencing of any kind whatsoever in this matter is justified and only serves as blatant retribution and to set an example to the world and nothing else.”
Kim-Zeggelaar told the judge that the matter of Jackson’s contact with his daughter has been left in the hands of the family law court.
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Regarding the prospect of a conditional sentence order that would allow Jackson to serve in the community, provided that he follow rules imposed by the court, the prosecutor stated that Jackson not agreeing with or abiding by a court order is what led to the offence at hand.
The judge plans to deliver her decision on sentence in early December.
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