Waiting for justice

Edward Hakim’s dossier will go before a Montreal appeals court next month where the 21 year-old Dorval man will find out if he can successfully commute an 18 month sentence to house arrest.

Martin Pilotte, Hakim’s lawyer, said this week his client has been “working hard” this summer while living at home with his family.

“We are not asking for a reduced sentence,” Pilotte said. “We are asking only for house arrest.”

And though he will not go before the three appeals judges that will hear the case on September 19, Claude Jolicoeur of St. Lazare says he will nevertheless wait at the courthouse in order to represent his daughter.

“I just hope that they don’t reverse the sentence,” he said. “I still think (the sentence) is not enough, but I hope they don’t reverse it.”

Hakim was sentenced to 18 months jail time in April for the November 29, 2006 hit-and-run accident that left 29 year-old St. Lazare resident Patricia Jolicoeur with severe brain damage and permanent injuries.

But Hakim walked out of a provincial jail one week after he was sentenced when Montreal Appeals Court Judge Yves-Marie Morissett green lighted a leave to appeal.

Patricia Jolicoeur, who now lives full-time in a West Island long-term care facility, remains blind in one eye and deaf in one ear. She cannot speak, or move the right

side of her body due to her brain injuries.

Her father said a recent trip to the dentist left the young woman battling pneumonia after fluid accumulated in her lungs.

“I mean it when I say this (accident) has been a life sentence for us,” Jolicoeur noted.

He questions why crimes involving money are often more harshly dealt with in court than those involving automobile accidents “and human life.”

“Vincent Lacroix was given 12 years,” he said of the founder and former president of Norbourg Investments, who was found guilty of defrauding more than 9,000 investors of $115 million through several illegal transactions.

“He got more than what you get when you hurt or kill somebody…what kind of message does that send to society? That money is worth more than a human life.”

Meanwhile the 18 year-old man who was arrested a charged with the Île Perrot accident that claimed the life of 3 year-old Bianca Leduc on Halloween day last October, is still waiting to see if he will be tried as an adult or as a minor.

The distinction could mean a difference of nine years maximum jail time, as adults can face up to 12 years, while minors would only face a maximum of three years in jail if convicted.

Judges and prosecutors have wrangled back and forth this summer to decide if the young man, who turned 18 on the day that he struck and killed Bianca, should be tried as an adult.

A court date has been set for next week, August 29 to settle the matter.