TORONTO — Sabastian Prosa was sentenced Monday for driving impaired in the wrong direction on Highway 427 and killing two people in a collision in 2012.
Justice Glenn Hainey said Prosa “showed a wanton and reckless disregard for the lives and safety of others,” but on Monday, Prosa was sentenced to five years in jail, plus an eight-year driving ban.
READ MORE: Sabastian Prosa sentenced to 5 years in prison in 2012 wrong way crash that killed 2
Antonette Wijernatne, who lost her husband and daughter in the crash, said she was disappointed in the sentence and expected more from the court.
“It will never be enough because he got only five years jail time, we got life sentences three years ago,” she said.
She also urged the government to toughen sentences for impaired drivers.
Premier Kathleen Wynne said her government has increased penalties and “if there are more severe penalties that need to be put in place we’ll certainly look into that.”
WATCH ABOVE: Wynne: I’m not going to second-guess sentence to Sabastian Prosa
Prosa was convicted on 12 charges, including impaired driving causing death. That charge alone is punishable by a maximum life sentence, so the five-year term raised some eyebrows.
As it turns out, five years is actually on the higher end of the sentencing spectrum, according to lawyer Antonietta Raviele.
Raveiele says the stiffest sentence she’s seen came in a case where a driver with a previous drunk-driving conviction again got behind the wheel and killed three people. In that case, the driver was sentenced to 15 years.
“I think a lot of people would think that was low,” she said.
WATCH: MADD spokesperson slams ‘disappointing’ sentencing in Sabastian Prosa case
Wijernatne’s son Brian echoed his mother’s call for tougher sentencing, saying that, “getting behind the wheel of a vehicle and killing people is no different than any other kind of murder.”
However, the courts draw a major distinction between impaired driving causing death and murder. The critical difference is that an impaired driver, no matter how reckless and stupid their behaviour may appear to be, lacks murderous intent. In other words, they weren’t planning to kill anyone, explains criminal lawyer Robb Macdonald.
In fact, Macdonald said the courts don’t make a major distinction between someone who drives impaired and kills others versus someone who drives impaired but causes no harm to anyone.
“The question is, should someone really be punished that much more significantly on the off-chance that they roll the dice and kill two people versus someone who just gets pulled over by the RIDE program and they didn’t hurt anyone, but they both made the same stupid decision to drive drunk.”
“Every time there’s someone who makes the bad decision to get behind the wheel after drinking, they’re playing Russian roulette. Maybe they end up in a farmer’s field, maybe they end up killing an innocent family. But the actual wrongdoing from one case to the next is not really any different despite the fact that in some cases people are dead and in others there aren’t.”
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