During the first phase of a hit-and-run sentencing hearing in provincial court, a B.C. Crown prosecutor suggested impaired drivers have a “strategic incentive” to flee the scene of collisions involving injury or death in our province.
Marcel Genaille’s vehicle was captured on security video speeding and changing lanes before he rear-ended a motorcyclist in a fatal June 19, 2021, collision in Burnaby.
Genaille, 37, kept driving according to an agreed statement of facts, blowing stop signs and losing his front bumper, before he abandoned his Honda Accord more than a kilometre away.
In May 2023, Genaille pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of the crash that killed 59-year-old James ‘Mark’ Peters.
During sentencing submissions last December, Crown prosecutor Mark Myhre said, “In this case, Mr. Genaille, prevented society from really getting to the bottom of what caused that collision.”
“The simple fact is we will never know. We won’t know what was in his blood that day, if anything,” he added.
“We just don’t know. It’s not aggravating that it could have been this or that. Crown can’t prove that there was anything.”
Genaille was not charged with nor accused of any offence other than leaving the scene of the crash.
Myhre referenced an older Alberta Queen’s Bench case when ensuring a sentence stresses the importance of general deterrence.
“The penalty for fleeing should be substantial enough to remove any strategic incentive available to the accused by fleeing,” Myhre said.
He also noted leaving the scene of an accident involving death has the same maximum sentence, life in prison, as impaired driving causing death.
Myhre said the highest sentence he could find from a previous fatal hit-and-run case in B.C. was two years in jail, while the sentencing range for impaired driving is two to 10 years.
“There’s an obvious disconnect there … It doesn’t make sense,” Myhre told the court at a Dec. 6, 2023 sentencing hearing.
“When you look at the sentencing range for leaving the scene and you look at the sentencing range for the crimes that could have potentially caused the collision, impaired driving being the primary one, it’s a straightforward calculus to leave the scene.”
Criminal lawyer Kyla Lee said sentences for leaving the scene are often higher to reflect the exact points Myhre made in his submissions, and because fleeing prevents the truth from coming out.
“He’s not wrong that there is effectively a strategic incentive to flee the scene in these cases and many people do, especially if they’re concerned perhaps that they’ve consumed alcohol or drugs before driving.”
Lee, who specializes in driving cases at Acumen Law, said a judge is free to impose whatever sentence is fit and it would be unjust to presume someone left the scene because they were committing another offence.
“The law recognizes by leaving available a lower range of sentence that some people, they just panic and they make the wrong decision,” she told Global News in an interview Tuesday.
“They don’t know what to do after an accident.”
In Genaille’s case, the Crown sought two years in jail and a five-year driving ban.
On June 27, Judge Andrea Brownstone handed Genaille an 18-month conditional sentence with the first eight months to be served under house arrest.