 Matthew Junkert is a convicted drunk driver who was sentenced to five years in prison after he killed a mother of four jogging on the sidewalk in 2006. Junkert's lawyer was at the Ontario Court of Appeal Thursday to argue that his punishment was too harsh and should have been in the range of just two to three years . (Craig Robertson, QMI Agency, file)
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TORONTO - A convicted drunk driver who mowed down a Richmond Hill mother of four jogging on the sidewalk was sentenced to just five years in prison -- and yet still has the audacity to complain it's too long.
Matthew Junkert's lawyer was at the Ontario Court of Appeal Thursday to argue that his punishment was too harsh and should have been in the range of just two to three years.
While his victim's mother could only listen and shake her head.
Junkert had more than twice the legal blood alcohol limit when he struck and killed Terri Callaway as she was out on her nightly jog in November 2006.
He was convicted of impaired driving and dangerous driving causing death and his five-year sentence by Justice Peter Wright was actually one of the stiffest ever handed down by an Ontario court for a motorist with no previous record.
York Regional Police estimated he was doing 90 km/h in a 50 km/h residential area when he mounted the sidewalk, slammed into Callaway, hit a parked car and finally came to rest after knocking down a concrete pole.
But before the panel of three appeal judges, Junkert's lawyer Alan Gold played down his client's blood alcohol count, questioned whether he was really driving particularly fast and almost seemed to suggest that it was Callaway's fault because she was listening to an MP3 player and may have actually been on the road at the time.
Her mother could only cringe.
"He makes it sound like he did nothing wrong," marvelled Micheline Cassidy.
When she knows so differently. A petite, elegant woman dressed in black, she was there to represent her daughter's devastated husband and their four motherless children.
"My loss I live with every day. She was my only daughter. Compound that 150% for her four children. The loss of their mother impacts them for life, it impacts them every day, it's there in their eyes.
"Now the one who killed her wants a lighter sentence?" she asked.
"Who's going to give my (grand)kids a lighter sentence?"
Who indeed? The children are just 12, 11, 10 and 6 -- three boys and a girl who is the spitting image of her mother.
"She's got confidence, she's beautiful," the proud grandmother says, a smile lighting up her sad face.
"But her mother's absence is profound. She won't be there for the heartbreaks, for their graduations, for their marriages, for their life.
"I live with this every day so to me," she added, "no sentence is long enough for him."
Crown prosecutor Heather Davies conceded Junkert's five-year prison term and 10-year driving ban was at the higher range of possible sentences but said it was appropriate.
"We have one of the most serious offences in the Criminal Code. It's punishable by life in prison. There was a loss of life," she argued.
"In impaired driving cases, deterrence and denunciation are the dominant sentencing principles."
Yet Gold made it sound as if his client should get off lightly because, after all, it was his first offence.
"He was 35," he told the judges, "with no previous criminal record, no evidence of an alcohol problem, some evidence of remorse ..."
To which Callaway's mother could only utter a soft, bitter laugh.
"He showed no remorse through the entire trial," she explained outside the court.
"He was given many opportunities by the judge to speak to the family and he refused."
Junkert's lawyer pointed to the case of former Leaf captain Rob Ramage who had a much higher blood alcohol level -- 229 compared to Junkert's 130 -- and yet was sentenced to one year less than his client.
"There was nothing particularly aggravating about this case," Gold told the court.
Nothing except for hitting and killing a defenceless mom simply out running in her neighbourhood, nothing except for being so inebriated that when confronted by the horror of what he'd done, he only replied, "Yeah, I was pretty stupid. Where's my car?"
The judges have reserved their decision.
michele.mandel@sunmedia.ca
