Gladue principles need to apply to more than sentencing, says Anishinaabe lawyer

If Gladuefactors were taken into consideration across the board instead of just at sentencing, it would reduce the number ofIndigenous people pleading guilty to things that they haven't done toget out of jail faster, says anAnishinaabecriminal lawyer.

The Supreme Court of Canada's 1999 Gladueruling sayssentencing judges must take into consideration the influence of things such as residential schools, the Sixties Scoop or child welfare system on Indigenous offenders.

Joey Twins, a 61-year-old Cree woman from Alberta, shared her story witha group of law students atMcGillUniversity on Tuesday night as a part of the InnocenceMcGill'sannual conference in Montreal.

Twins says she was coerced into pleading guilty to a second-degree murder charge in 1979as a result of systemic racism in Canada's justice system.

"My lawyer told me to plead. If I didn't plead life 10, I would have got life 25 at a trial. I had no choice and I didn't know the law," said Twins.

This year's Innocence McGill conference focused on the relationshipbetween Indigenous Peoples and the Canadian criminal justice system.

"Indigenous Peoples areseverelyoverrepresentedin the criminal justice and prison systems," said Kayla Tink, co-director of Innocence McGill.

"There is reason tobelievethey are also wrongly convicted at higher rates, but the system doesn't function in a vacuum. There are broadersocietalissues that havecontributedto where we are now, like racism and colonialism and we must confront them."

'Tragic, common experience'

Anishinaabe criminal lawyer Promise Holmes Skinner says situations like Twin's casearestill happening to Indigenous people throughout Canada's justice system. She wants theprinciples behindGladuereports to be appliedbeyond sentencing.

"Wherever the system has the opportunity to remedy its failures, it should be imposing whatever system, tools, and open-mindedness that it has the opportunity to do," said Holmes Skinner, who was theGladue Program Specialist at Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto from2015 to 2018.

One of those opportunities, she says, is to apply Gladue factors beginning at bail hearings, to help curb the number of Indigenous people pleading guilty to crimes they did not commit.

"It's a really tragic, common experience in courts," said Holmes Skinner.

"A lot of people plead guilty to things that they haven't done for various reasons. We heard about one very real reason from Joey. Another reason that is a huge problem in this country is that people will get out of jail fasterthan if they have a trial."

She said pleading guilty contributes to a revolving door of injustices for Indigenous offenders because previous convictions can be used against them in future criminal cases.

"All courts have to consider the context of the convictions they want to use against the individual and they must look at those convictions through a Gladue lens to try to minimize the opportunity for wrongful convictions."