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In July the Manitoba Court of Appeal upheld a sentence issued last year by Winnipeg judge Ronald Meyers. The high court ruled that under the Youth Criminal Justice Act of 2002, deterrence should not be a factor in the sentencing of underage offenders, and so Meyers was correct in awarding a jail term of one day (plus supervision) to a 15-year-old boy who beat a man to death with a billiard ball in a sock. The following month Meyers, who according to a Canadian Press article has complained that the justice act ties judges’ hands, sentenced two teenage boys with 22 prior violent-crime convictions between them to terms of six and eight months respectively for three counts of armed robbery.
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People With Issues
Emergency medical technicians summoned in August to the home of a grossly overweight woman in Stuart, Florida, found that in addition to the classic problem in such cases–doorways too narrow–there was an even more serious concern: the 4-foot-10, 480-pound woman had not budged from her couch in several years, and the fabric had adhered to her skin. She and the couch were transported via trailer to the hospital, where she died during the attempt to free her.
