A homeless squatter was facing jail time, but the judge had a different idea
On a rainy night, he found a vacant house
A homeless man who was arrested for sleeping in a vacant house won't be going to jail.
The judge decided a quirk in the provincial jail schedule — and the man's circumstances — dictate otherwise.
The 34-year-old Kings County resident pleaded guilty Thursday in Georgetown Provincial Court to a squatting-related charge.
Court heard the man took refuge on the back porch of the vacant house on Main Street in Souris, during a rain storm Aug. 27. He'd been sleeping on the streets for several days, but found a door unlocked and electrical power in the house still in service, so he decided to sleep inside.
The owner of the property came by the next day and found some of the man's belongings inside — including a video-game console and a television, which court heard he used to communicate with his kids — and called police.
"Everybody's sympathetic to the man's situation," said Crown prosecutor Nathan Beck, during the sentencing hearing. Beck recommended a jail sentence because the man was on probation at the time of the incident.
Defence lawyer Karen MacLeod asked the judge for an intermittent sentence, to be served on weekends. MacLeod told court the man is now working full time, and had managed to arrange transportation from Souris to the jail in Charlottetown on Friday nights and back home Sunday mornings.
The jail doesn't let people out Sunday ... I have no idea why.- Chief Provincial Court Judge Nancy Orr
But that wouldn't work, according to the judge.
"The jail doesn't let people out Sunday mornings," said Chief Provincial Court Judge Nancy Orr. "For some reason, they don't do it. It's been that way for years and I have no idea why."
So instead of sending him to jail, the judge fined the man $1,000.
"Just don't do anything stupid again," she told him.
The man told the judge he had been unable to find a place to stay that night.
"I've burned a lot of bridges over the years," he said.
He told the judge his mother had allowed him to sleep in her barn for a few weeks after the incident.
Offenders serving weekend sentences are typically released from the Provincial Correctional Centre on Monday mornings.
The man now has a place to live in Souris.