Career thug gets slim ray of hope

In the unlikely event that 40-year-old Mosesee Nowdlak of Iqaluit stays out of trouble, he may yet avoid the prospect of spending the rest of his natural life in jail, thanks to a decision issued last week by Justice Earl Johnson of the Nunavut Court of Justice.

Johnson ordered that Nowdlak, a career thug known on the streets as “Cowboy,” be designated a “long-term” offender.

That’s one step below the “dangerous” offender tag sought by Crown lawyers, which would have triggered the toughest sentence available under the Criminal Code: an “indeterminate” penitentiary sentence. For nearly all dangerous offenders, that’s effectively the same as life.

Nowdlak will instead serve eight years in jail, followed by 10 years of close supervision. That supervision likely means a period of detention at a type of community correctional centre that doesn’t exist in Nunavut.

In doing so, Johnson allowed for the slim chance that, when he grows older, Nowdlak may pose a less serious risk to the community.

“If the offender opens his heart and mind to altering his behaviour, there may come a point when he can be restored in the community. That time is not now and will not be in the forseeable future,” Johnson said after reviewing evidence from 30 documents and 11 witnesses who appeared at Nowdlak’s dangerous offender hearing earlier this year.

Crown prosecutor Christine Gagnon applied for the hearing after Nowdlak’s most recent conviction, assault with a weapon, the weapon being a hammer that Nowdlak applied to another man’s head at house 134B on May 5, 2001.

The day before, on May 4, 2001, Nowdlak set two fires that destroyed another unit in the same neighbourhood, 307A, because he thought people he was partying with there had stolen his booze.

Nowdlak acquired the liquor in a trade with a taxi driver, with whom he exchanged the proceeds of yet another crime committed earlier that day: a rip-off at Arctic College, where Nowdlak stole a laptop computer, a digital camera, and some carvings.

In April of 2003, Nowdlak was sentenced to 30 months in jail for arson, assault and break-and-enter convictions, and was to be released later this month, on Sept. 24.

But he wasn’t sentenced on the assault with a weapon charge until Johnson’s judgment last week.

That’s because, in January of 2003, the Crown set into motion a process that turned the assault-with-a-weapon sentencing hearing into a dangerous offender application.

The rarely-used dangerous offender designation, created in 1997, is applied to the worst of the worst: high-risk violent criminals who are convicted of a serious personal injury offence, who display a pattern of persistent violence, and who are shown to be a serious threat to public safety.

According to Correctional Services of Canada, only about 24 newly-designated dangerous offenders are admitted to prison each year. As of May 2005 there were 336 active dangerous offenders; only 17 have received some form of parole and many are repeat sex offenders.

In attempting to prove that there’s little or no chance that Nowdlak will change his ways, the Crown received permission from the court to have him examined by Dr. Phillip Klassen, a forensic psychiatrist.

Nowdlak wouldn’t allow Klassen to interview him, so the psychiatrist based his opinions on various documents, including observations made by other doctors.

In his report, Klassen said Nowdlak displays a “classic” psychopathic manner; who does what he wants to get what he wants; and that his crimes vary in intensity depending on the availability of liquor, weapons and victims.

“He is without remorse for his misdeeds, and is substantially without empathy for others. He shows little or no interest in self-change, or goal setting. He is at a high risk of future general and violent criminal recidivism…” Klassen said in his report, which the Crown submitted as evidence at the hearing.

Unlike many dangerous offender candidates, Nowdlak has never been convicted of a sex offence.

At the age of 11, Nowdlak was expelled from school for aggressive behaviour. At 13, a social worker described him as the “king” of Iqaluit’s juvenile delinquents.

Nowdlak’s subsequent criminal record, listing about 80 adult and juvenile convictions, is so convoluted that the court used an Excel spreadsheet to sort it out. It begins in 1979, at age 14, with a theft conviction. At 16, he served his first jail sentence: for dangerous use of a firearm, possession of stolen property, breach of probation and failure to appear.

A pie chart attached to Johnson’s judgment shows that since his first stint behind bars in 1982, Nowdlak has spent 71.5 per cent of his life serving jail sentences and 13.29 per cent of his life held in remand.

That leaves only 16 per cent of his adult life spent outside of a jail cell — and much of that time was during periods of early release.

Of the many victims who Nowdlak preyed upon during his criminal career, the saddest, perhaps, is a Pond Inlet woman who now calls him a “monster.”

In 1997, Nowdlak used the woman as part of a release plan when he got out of jail that year. During his short time with her, Nowdlak forced the woman to sell her possessions to pay his debts and provide him with gambling money. He trashed her house, destroyed her furniture, abused her physically and mentally, and assaulted her while sober.
“In only three months, the offender managed to wreck her life and left scars that are still apparent today, seven years later,” Johnson said.