Locking up Gary Edwin Mattson for an indeterminate period is not the best way to ensure he receives the treatment and programming he needs to be rehabilitated, his lawyer argued Friday morning as the defence began its closing arguments.
Mattson pleaded guilty to the vicious assault on Edmonton Transit driver and St. Albert resident Tom Bregg last May. The Crown wants Mattson designated a dangerous offender, keeping him behind bars indefinitely.
Naeem Rauf was responding to the Crown’s position, presented Thursday afternoon, in which Patricia Innes argued that designating Mattson a dangerous offender was the only way he could ever hope to function as a contributing member of society.
Citing statistics that indicated accessing the programming Mattson needs could take as long as five years, Innes had argued that an indeterminate sentence, which allows a parole hearing after seven years and every two years afterwards, followed by the maximum allowable 10 years of probation upon release, was the best way to ensure Mattson changes his ways.
“An indeterminate sentence is not throwing away the key,” Innes told the court.
If Judge Harry Bridges finds Mattson is a dangerous offender, he has three sentencing options available. He can lock Mattson away for an indeterminate period of time, he can sentence him to a prison sentence of at least two years with up to 10 years probation, or he can sentence him for the crimes to which he has pleaded guilty — aggravated assault and assaulting a peace officer.
Rauf countered that the opposite was true — that not designating Mattson a dangerous offender would ensure speedier access to necessary programming and therapy given that previous evidence from corrections officials has found individuals designated as dangerous offenders fall to the bottom of the wait list when programming becomes available.
Rauf also continued his assault on the psychiatric report produced by Dr. Curtis Woods, assailing its “pompous, inflated, jargon-laden, woolly report,” that was nearly incomprehensible to most and dissected Mattson in a way few others have been subject to, especially considering the first notation starts when Mattson was two years old.
“I am surprised the Crown didn’t call Ruby Mattson’s obstetrician to testify that Gary kicked very vigorously in the womb,” Rauf noted dryly.
The Crown has relied heavily on Woods’ report, which found Mattson suffers from paranoid personality disorder, anti-social personality disorder and addictions problems. That report found Mattson could be rehabilitated with aggressive treatment while in prison, as well as a lengthy, closely monitored probationary term once released.
Even if the court was to ignore Woods’ diagnosis of Mattson as having paranoid personality disorder, the subsequent inference is frightening, co-Crown prosecutor Alana Elliot said.
“That means he is just violent and responds to irritants with violence, which is even more disturbing.”
The litany of assaults the Crown has presented to the court to make its case for dangerous offender status included trying to assault a police officer in a police station when simply asked how Mattson had sustained an injury to his hand, and punching and knocking down a female acquaintance after arguing about which liquor store they should go to.
“This is an aggressive, impulsive reaction to a dispute of a fairly minor matter,” Elliot told Bridges.
While acknowledging that Mattson had never spent more than 90 days in jail for any conviction and that only two cases — including his assault on Bregg — had ever resulted in injury to another person, Elliot said the violence demonstrated in the assault on Bregg is evidence of an offender who is growing increasingly dangerous.
The defence will resume its closing arguments April 12.
