Man who murdered girlfriend gets reduced sentence partly due to his race
A man who stabbed his girlfriend to death at a shopping centre in British Columbia received a lighter sentence partly because of his race.
Everton Javaun Downey, 35, stabbed his girlfriend, Melissa Blimkie, 15 times in a stairwell at the Metrotown Shopping Centre in Burnaby on Dec. 19, 2021. Downey fled the scene with the murder weapon before later turning himself in to police.
Downey was convicted of second-degree murder and was sentenced last month to life in prison. The Crown was seeking no chance for parole for at least 15 years, but B.C. Supreme Court Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes went with 12 years after reviewing Downey’s Impact of Race and Culture Assessment (IRCA).
“As I have indicated, Mr. Downey has a substantial criminal record involving violence and firearms. I recognize, however, that the aggravating effect of his criminal record is offset in part by the mitigating circumstances of his background, as detailed in the IRCA,” Holmes said in her Feb. 13 decision.
Similar in function to Gladue reports for Indigenous offenders, IRCAs are designed to “help criminal justice professionals better understand the effects of poverty, marginalization, racism, and social exclusion on Black and racialized offenders and their experiences,” according to the Department of Justice. IRCAs were first developed by a Nova Scotia sociologist in 2014 and are now increasingly used in Canadian courts.
The IRCA in Downey’s case, authored by University of Calgary social work professor Patrina Duhaney , describes Downey as a “Black man of African Nova Scotian, African American and Jamaican ancestry.” However, it notes that he did not experience “overt racism” in his early life.
“He grew up in Toronto in predominantly Black and racially diverse neighbourhoods and attended racially diverse schools, and felt that he did not experience overt racism,” according to Holmes’ decision. “Mr. Downey explained to Dr. Duhaney that his experience living in communities which normalized racial diversity shaped his early sense of identity and belonging.”
In 2016, Downey moved to British Columbia, where he felt adrift.
“Here, he found a much smaller Black population, and the cultural norms among Black communities felt unfamiliar to him, and contributed to feelings of disconnection and isolation. He also experienced racism in ways he had not previously encountered, both in the community and in the institutional setting,” Holmes writes.
While Downey had “a significant criminal record that includes serious offences of violence,” which predated his time in British Columbia, in Holmes’s view, the IRCA submission made “clear that broader systemic, structural, and community factors relating to Mr. Downey’s experience as a Black person have played a part in his life experience, bringing various types of trauma, negative peer influences, and mental health challenges.”
Downey experienced poverty, the absence of his father in his early years, domestic violence at home and shootings in his neighbourhood.
The justice cites the IRCA in her judgment to refer to Downey’s “lasting sense of danger and mistrust,” the lingering mental health effects stemming from previous incarcerations and the stress of being away from his community in Ontario.
Holmes specifically cites the IRCA under “Mitigating Circumstances,” writing that the submission demonstrated “early exposure to violence, chronic instability, poverty, systemic anti-Black racism, and untreated mental health symptoms, such as hypervigilance, that may be trauma related.”
Other mitigating factors include Downey’s admission that he killed Blimkie and his expression of remorse in a personal statement to the court.
The devastating pain to Blimkie’s friends and family, however, still lingers.
“The victims have suffered an almost unbearable loss that affects them all profoundly, and, for some, in almost every aspect of their lives,” Holmes wrote.
“The family members feel the loss all the more deeply because they had no opportunity to say goodbye to Ms. Blimkie or to give her comfort in her final moments. They also feel betrayed by Mr. Downey who they welcomed into their home.”
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