Wallace G. Craig

Contributing Writer

North Shore News: The Voice of North and West Vancouver

published on 01/25/2006

HERE'S a statement that harks back to Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel, A Clockwork Orange, and its central characters, Alex and his droogs:

" . . . what is chilling is that this group seems to have done this for some reprehensible and almost inconceivable concept of entertainment."

These words are part of Justice Mary Humphries Feb. 8, 2005 judgment in sentencing Ryan Cran to six years imprisonment for the bloodthirsty manslaughter of Aaron Webster. Earlier, two co-accused youths had been sentenced by a provincial court judge to a maximum term of three years.

The Vancouver Sun reported that Webster, a gay man, was swarmed by the accused on the night of Nov. 11, 2001, near Second Beach in Stanley Park, and beaten to the ground with baseball bats and pool cues. One blow to Webster's neck severed an artery and he died where he lay beside his car.

There is a clockwork-orange eeriness about this case. It fits Burgess's portrayal of malignant freewill possessed by his principal character Alex, an intelligent 15-year-old, who leads his gang in random acts of horrifying violence, murder and rape.

Webster's killers are a 21st century embodiment of Alex and his droogs.

The reality of their purposeful savagery, pack brutality, and pit-bull psychopathy sweeps away the judge's tentative conclusion that "this group seems to have done this for some . . . entertainment." They slaughtered Webster for amusement. That is evil incarnate. They deserved a maximum sentence.

Too often when we open a newspaper or listen to a newscast we are devastated by another clockwork-orange beating, stabbing, maiming, shooting, or killing.

Here's a very small sampling as reported in the Vancouver Sun.

Aug. 19, 2000, on Vancouver's west side: Two adolescents and one adult swarm 18-year-old Joel Libin. He is punched and kicked into a coma and awakens weeks later in the hell of disabling brain damage. For this "recreational beating" the adult ringleader is charged with the 14-year-maximum offence of aggravated assault and jailed for only three years beyond the 22 months he had been in jail awaiting trial. The youths, charged with a lesser offence of assault causing bodily harm, are placed under house arrest for two years.

June 17, 2003, on Vancouver's west side: A group of youths crash a 14-year-old girl's birthday party and attack her chaperoning 20- and 22-year-old brothers. Both are kicked and stomped. The younger is struck with a fence board and loses an eye. The Sun's Ian Mulgrew characterized the attack as "a bloody, backyard bushwhacking." A 16-year-old is sentenced to only 200 days in jail for assault causing bodily harm.

June 2004 in North Vancouver's Waterfront Park: A group of teens encounter two men. After words are exchanged the group attacks. One man is fatally stabbed by a 16-year-old who gets jailed for only 15 months in addition to the several months he has been in jail awaiting sentencing.

Dec. 26, 2004, in Port Coquitlam: A machete and baseball-bat wielding gang invades a party. One of their victims sustains serious injury: a severed Achilles tendon, a cut tendon on his left arm, a slashed hand and a compound fracture of his ankle.

February 2005, near a Sky-Train station in Coquitlam: A gang of 10 or so adolescents set upon three young men and beat them with bricks concealed in their hands. One victim is hit with a bottle and then repeatedly kicked in the head. The attackers escape.

Dec. 29, 2005, in White Rock: A teenager deliberately pushes an 81-year-old man into the path of an approaching car. Luckily the driver of the car was able to stop in time to avoid hitting the man.

The next two cases are highly unusual because the victims sued their tormentors for damages.

March 29, 2003, in Vancouver: While strolling on Granville Street, Anthony Yeh is confronted by 26-year-old James William Kenneth Whittle. The much larger Whittle, drunk and obnoxious, punches Yeh to the ground and kicks him in the face causing serious facial and eye injury. For his criminal violence Whittle is given a conditional sentence - house arrest. In subsequent civil proceedings Yeh is awarded damages of approximately $90,000 but no punitive damages. Mulgrew wrote a blistering column on the proceedings, in part stating: "The curtain finally came down Thursday on that unprovoked and cowardly act by an inebriated bully who didn't even get a good rap on the wrist for the crime. . . . He could have assessed punitive damages - which are to be awarded in situations so malicious, oppressive and high-handed they offend the court's sense of decency. He did not. 'The Defendant has been punished criminally,' (Judge) Silverman wrote. . . . 'While he is not deserving of any commendation in view of the repugnant assault that caused this action, I conclude in view of all the circumstances that punitive damages are not appropriate.'"

Mulgrew disagreed with Silverman's decision, and I do too. Whittle's savage beating of Yeh was beyond repugnant. Simple compensation for his injuries was not enough. Whittle had engaged in callous and brutal criminal behaviour. He is a coward who should bear the burden of punitive damages - an additional financial penalty to alleviate Yeh's never-ending nightmare of unprovoked criminal violence that left him with permanent injuries. The judge treated Yeh as though his injuries were the result of a simple act of civil negligence. Wrong!

October 2001 in Esquimalt: On his way to meet his girl friend, 19-year-old Nicholas Chow-Johnson is swarmed by at least three young punks and beaten into a vegetative state. The lives of his assailants are interrupted only in the briefest manner by convictions on charges of aggravated assault. Two of them, as young offenders, receive sentences of two and three years respectively; the adult offender receives eight years. They will serve less than half their sentences.

One way to assess the savagery of these psychopaths is through the judgment against them in a subsequent civil action. It makes them liable to pay $5.7 million damages, reflecting the extent of Chow-Johnson's disabling injuries and the cost of institutional lifelong care. Punitive damages were not awarded.

Justice Koenigsberg said: "As a result of the assaults Johnson will live in a state of permanent helplessness. He cannot speak. He cannot swallow properly and must be fed pureed foods by others' hands. He is completely paralyzed on his right side and has spasticity and only limited control of his left side. He is incontinent. He is incapable of sitting up by himself and when lifted from a lying position in his bed by a crane-swing device, he must be strapped into a wheelchair.

"There is a claim for punitive damages in this case. The law on punitive damages in relation to tort claims is relatively clear. When one is faced with a case like this, how can one say that punitive damages should not be awarded. They are meant to punish for outrageous, high-handed and malicious conduct. It does not get any more malicious or outrageous than this conduct. However, all three of these young men have been punished by the criminal law. It is not for this court to say that that punishment was not sufficient and that it should have been more severe.

". . . I do not intend to award punitive damages. No matter how much such an award is deserved in the circumstances of this case, these young men have received punishment in terms of our law and as understood by our society."

Koenigsberg's reference to punishment in collateral criminal proceedings reveals an error in law. She overlooked the fact that an act of criminal violence gives rise to two separate and distinct cases:

(a) a public criminal offence prosecuted by the state in which the victim is merely a witness and in which the judge has no authority to award compensatory and punitive damages;

(b) a private civil lawsuit in tort law in which the victim is a plaintiff and prosecutes the case unencumbered by the result - acquittal or conviction - in collateral criminal proceedings.

Quite remarkably, Koenigsberg mused over the mental processes of the attackers and made an illogical assumption: "I suppose there is no explanation for how you do such a thing, assuming that you are not a psychopath. There is no evidence that any of these three young men are psychopaths, that is they have no conscience."

If Koenigsberg had spelled out the precise meaning of "conscience" - a moral sense of right and wrong, especially as felt by a person and affecting behaviour (the Canadian Oxford Dictionary) - then it would have become obvious to her that the conscienceless beating of Chow-Johnson was, of itself, a living and breathing definition of psychopathy.

It was an injustice to deny Chow-Johnson punitive damages.

Anthony Burgess' 1962 imaginative insight - a vision of a plague of psychopathic young people - is today's reality. Our safety at home and in public is under attack by clear-minded yet highly anti-social adolescents and young men who go beyond youthful rebellion to acts of savage cruelty without a flicker of concern for their helpless victims.

They must be confronted with hardnosed prosecutors and gutsy judges. If not, vigilantism will be on the rise.

e-mail: craig@canadianjusticereviewboard.ca