A former Canadian Football League player convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend has been sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 14 years.
Former wide-receiver Josh Boden, dressed in a black suit, kept his head down during sentencing as he sat in the prisoner’s box.
Boden was convicted of second-degree murder last November in the death of Kimberly Hallgarth.
“Obviously no sentence is obviously going to make us feel any better about losing our losing Kim,” Hallgarth’s brother Jamie Errand said.
“The lack of remorse and admittance to the crime is really not great however that’s not me that has to live with that that’s somebody else right.”
Errand was among seven members of Hallgarth’s family who sat in the second row of the court room’s observer gallery, directly behind Boden in the prisoner’s box.
The group clapped as Justice Arne Silverman handed the sentence down at B.C. Supreme Court on Friday.
Hallgarth, 33, was found dead in her Burnaby, B.C. home in May 2009, with what police at the time called “suspicious injuries.”
Boden wasn’t charged in the killing until 2018.
Second-degree murder in Canada carries an automatic sentence of life in prison, with parole eligibility as early as 10 years.
At a sentencing hearing last week, Crown prosecutor Brendan McCabe argued Boden should spend at least 15 years in prison for choking Hallgarth to death, then staging the scene to make it appear like an accident.
McCabe said Boden surrounded Hallgarth’s body with pills and put some in her mouth, then stuffed it with socks as she lay dying at the bottom of a stairwell.
Boden’s lawyer Kevin Westell had argued for 12-year parole eligibility, citing the 35-year-old’s experience of systemic racism, poor role modelling from his parents, sexual abuse by an older woman and ADHD and dyslexia as “indirect” links to the crime.
Boden played for the BC Lions in 2007, and has had several run-ins with the law since the end of his playing career.
He was charged with two counts of assault related to an arrest in New Westminster in May, 2018.
Prior to that, he was convicted on two counts of sexual assault and one count each of obstructing justice and assaulting a police officer after groping a woman at a SkyTrain station in 2009.
– With files from the Canadian Press
- 2 teens charged with murder in case of 16-year-old killed outside Halifax mall
- Green Party deputy leader given jail sentence for Fairy Creek old growth protests
- Cars torched, explosions heard in suspected arson in Montreal neighbourhood
- Gas station clerk stabbed several times during violent attack at Ultramar in Montreal
Comments