This St. John's panhandler is stuck in a cycle of court appearances he can't remember
7 charges for petty crimes snowballed into dozens for Eugene Hynes — and it's very expensive
Eugene Hynes has the kind of weathered skin only found on someone who spends too many hours outdoors with nowhere to go.
His hands are cracked and dried as they reach out to accept change from people walking by. His tactics are aggressive at times, bordering on badgering.
But according to his record, he's never hurt anybody.
"People treat me good, yeah, they treat me good here," Hynes said. "Good, good."
Hynes is a staple on the streets of St. John's, and a mainstay on the court docket for petty crimes and breaching dozens of court conditions he can't keep track of.
The vast majority of them are found fit ... it's extraordinarily low.- Tim O'Brien, lawyer
The 49-year-old said he has problems with his memory and nobody to help him break an unforgiving cycle.
"If you don't show up in court and you forget your court date, you go to jail," he said.
When Hynes forgets his court date, a warrant is issued for his arrest and additional charges are added to his record. He gets bailed out and given a list of conditions, including a date to appear in court again.
The cycle starts over.
He's currently on the docket for 46 different charges, 39 of which are breaches of court orders or forgotten court dates. The rest are minor offences.
Rare cases like Anne Norris or Graham Veitch give the public a glimpse at how the justice system handles people with the most severe mental illnesses. But for every schizophrenic killer found not criminally responsible, there's dozens of people like Eugene Hynes, swallowed by a court system with little regard for their diminished mental capacities.
It's clogging up court time and burning public money.
Unfit to care for yourself, but fit enough for trial
Tim O'Brien has perhaps the most frustrating job in the legal profession.
He's spent two years as the duty counsel in bail court — meaning he is the first point of contact for people arrested overnight and standing before a judge in the morning.
His office is barely bigger than the holding cell his clients spend the night in. It's cluttered with papers — files for the dozens of people he sees every day — and neckties of every colour and pattern.
He doesn't have the luxury of time. O'Brien grabs a tie off his filing cabinet before walking into court to deal with his first client.
Once or twice a week, he comes across a person like Hynes and watches as they cast off into a justice system that treats them the same as anyone else.
"There are often people who are found fit to stand trial, who [are] remarkably low functioning and have a very difficult time finding their way through the court system without assistance," O'Brien said.
If there's any question about a person's state of mind, they are sent for a psychiatric evaluation. According to O'Brien, this is where the problems begin.
"The vast majority of them are found fit to stand trial, but the standard for fitness in this country, the way it's set out in the criminal code, it's extraordinarily low."
The law only requires a person to have the mental wherewithal to communicate with lawyers and follow the proceedings.
When asked if he understands what is happening in the courtroom, Hynes said yes. When asked if he can remember what happened afterward, Hynes said no.
The bar is set so low, he can't stop tripping over it.
In provincial court, cases move at an incremental pace, meaning a case is called every few weeks, sometimes for more than a year.
If you can hire a lawyer, they'll often appear on your behalf while you stay home. For someone like Hynes, a panhandler on Water Street, that's out of the question.
He has to be there. And when he isn't, it's off to the lockup for the night and an appointment in O'Brien's office in the morning.
Striking a deal
As a reporter often assigned to covering court, I run into Eugene Hynes often.
Atlantic Place, the home of provincial court in St. John's, is his usual haunt.
He pokes his head in my window as I'm parallel parking and asks if I have any change for a coffee. Some days he just asks me the time.
We met with Hynes on the street outside provincial court last Tuesday. I asked if he was ready for his hearing the next day, and his blue-green eyes widened.
"I got court tomorrow?"
I browsed through my phone and showed him his name on the docket — Courtroom 8 at 2 p.m.
The next day, he sat on a chair to the side of a jam-packed room, holding his touque in his hands.
"No custody today," Hynes told me beforehand. "No custody, no custody."
He interrupted proceedings more than 10 times to ask when he had to be in court again. Some people chuckled at first, amused by the gall it takes to speak over a sitting judge.
With a patient but firm tone, the judge told him his lawyer would write it on a piece of paper for him when they were done speaking. Moments later, Hynes asked again.
The hearing ended when the Crown and defence agreed to a compromise. Hynes would plead guilty to two of the 46 charges on the docket if the others were dropped.
At another hearing on July 24, Hynes will learn his punishment.
Two days before that, he's due for a court appearance 400 kilometres away in Grand Falls-Windsor, where he's accused of a break and enter and four breaches of conditions before he moved to St. John's.
He has no idea how he's going to get there.
"I got no transportation, I got no transportation," he repeats. "I'll miss that court date, yeah."
It'll be off to the lockup again, with another charge of failure to appear in court.
Hynes came from his hometown of Lewisporte a few years ago on a DRL bus. He has no family in St. John's, and gets his meals from the Gathering Place. He feels his life would be easier if he only had more help.
Bail supervision a good start
After two years in his cramped office, Tim O'Brien is stepping away from the role of duty counsel and jumping back into the pool of everyday defence lawyers.
His experience has left him with an appreciation for the complex and nuanced reasons people end up in court. It's also given him an appreciation for what the justice system lacks.
One positive step would be a bail supervision program, so people like Eugene Hynes would have someone looking after them on the outside.
"On one side of it, they're responsible for observing the person in the community and making sure they're compliant with their bail conditions," he said. "But at the same time, they provide the person assistance in following the conditions."
They can also help people find existing supports, O'Brien said, which can be hard to avail of if you don't know where to look.
In the latest provincial budget, the justice department committed to spend $354,000 on a bail supervision and ankle bracelet monitoring program this year. It's on track to start in the fall, but it's unclear if it will create new boots-on-the-ground jobs.
While the justice department works to bring systemic change to help people like Hynes, he'll be looking to strangers on Water Street for pocket change to help him.
If there's more assistance available for him, he doesn't know where to look.
Or maybe he doesn't remember.
"I got no help. No help. No help."
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