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Another protester charged following the 2022 Ambassador Bridge blockade that halted billions of dollars in cross-border trade and traffic has walked away with no criminal record, according to The Democracy Fund.
The Canadian charity said Tuesday that Theodorus DeBoer, who earlier pleaded guilty to mischief, will avoid a criminal record after his original sentence by a lower-court judge was appealed to the Superior Court of Justice.
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With the conclusion of DeBoer’s case, The Democracy Fund (TDF) said none of the 13 people it defended in relation to the bridge blockade ended up with criminal records.
“Some of those charges were stayed,” said lawyer Alan Honner, who argued DeBoer’s appeal on behalf of TDF. “Sometimes the charges were withdrawn. In some cases, the clients pled guilty and received a discharge. In another case, charges were withdrawn after the accused had made a (charitable) donation through a process generally known as diversion.”
Police arrested at least 46 people following the week-long bridge blockade by protesters opposed to COVID-19 mandates. Dozens of people were charged with mischief for blocking access to the bridge and for disobeying a court order after a Superior Court justice issued an injunction.
There have been some convictions, but many of the criminal charges have been quietly withdrawn or settled through other means.
The Democracy Fund, a charity founded in 2021 that is dedicated to “strengthening democracy by defending civil liberties,” said it represented the rights of Windsor protesters in several ways.
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TDF said it sent lawyers to Windsor to provide summary legal advice to protesters and made court submissions on the parameters of the injunction to end the occupation of North America’s busiest commercial border crossing.
The organization said earlier this year it was representing 13 individuals who were criminally charged. DeBoer’s was the last of those cases to work its way through the courts. He pleaded guilty in November 2023 in Ontario Court of Justice to one count of mischief for obstructing traffic at the bridge.
As part of a plea deal, The Democracy Fund said the prosecution agreed to drop a more serious charge of disobeying a court order.
The prosecution and defence then made a joint sentencing submission, according to TDF. They asked the judge to give DeBoer a discharge with court conditions, and no sentence that would carry a criminal record.
The judge, however, rejected that joint submission and imposed a suspended sentence which included probation — and a criminal record, according to The Democracy Fund. It’s rare for a judge to depart from a joint sentencing submission.
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“It has to meet a very high threshold of bringing the administration of justice into disrepute or otherwise being contrary to the public interest,” Honner told the Star. “In the case of Mr. DeBoer, the (judge’s) sentence didn’t meet that very high threshold.”
The Democracy Fund launched an appeal to the Superior Court of Justice.
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“The Appellate Court agreed with Honner’s submission that the trial judge erred by applying the wrong legal test,” according to TDF.
“It varied the sentence to bring it into conformity with the original joint submission: the criminal record was vacated.”
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