Baffin Correctional Centre inmate to go to federal prison for assaults on guards

Iola Lucassie was sentenced to serve two years and a day in a federal penitentiary Friday after being convicted of an aggregated assault charge and pleading guilty to a number of charges including multiple assaults on corrections officers while he was being held at the Baffin Correctional Centre in Iqaluit.

Justice Earl Johnson recommended Lucassie serve his sentence at the Fenbrook Institution, a medium security prison near Gravenhurst, Ont. 

Lucassie had pleaded guilty to a number of assault charges including one incident in 2013 where he punched three corrections officers and struck one with a chair, cutting his head. 

He was convicted of an aggravated assault charge for using the chair.

"It was a very serious incident and I fully understand why the BCC guards are very fearful of you," Johnson said by telephone in an Iqaluit courtroom.

In two other incidents, Lucassie spat on and threw scalding tea at a corrections officer.

The Crown presented the corrections officer's victim impact statement, translated from French, in which he said that working with Lucassie began adding a layer of fear and stress to his job, even affecting his life outside of work.

In the statement, the officer said when he started working at BCC two and a half years ago, he would often go out to the movies, the gym or go grocery shopping.

"But since I met Iola Lucassie at BCC I cut down on some of these activities and some I stopped completely," read the statement.

The officer also said he would take days off of work and now sees a psychologist. 

'A very bright, manipulative man'

Crown prosecutor Myriam Girard called Lucassie "a very bright, manipulative man who knows exactly what button to push in everybody."

"I think it makes him somebody really who is not the stuff that BCC can handle," she said.

The Crown was seeking a five-year sentence in a federal penitentiary, minus the more than two-and-a-half-years Lucassie spent in jail while waiting for trial.

"We know that BCC cannot offer him anything better," Girard said. 

"If he can be rehabilitated, it's not with what BCC can offer him."

Lucassie's defence lawyer Jonathan Park was seeking a sentence of two years and five months.

In his submission, Park said Lucassie spent extended periods of time in isolation, in essence serving as punishment for assaulting the corrections officers prior to his day in court.

Park said Lucassie was abused and ended up in foster care at the age of six. He ended up serving time in the Kingston penitentiary when he was 19 following an aggravated assault conviction.

"I know I was in the wrong for acting aggressively and violently towards correction officers," Lucassie told the judge.

"I want to seek some help. I need some counselling. I think I need some medications to stabilize my anger, my mood. I think that's going to help me a lot."

Johnson sentenced Lucassie to the shortest possible sentence that can be served in a federal institution. 

"You're continuing to act out and rebel against the system because you're feeling very – as your counsel has indicated –you're feeling very frustrated and cornered by the system and by the place that you found yourself in," Johnson said. 

"And so the only thing that you knew how to assert any kind of control in your life was to assert your anger on the prison guards."

Johnson said spending time at the Fenbrook Institution, which provides specialized programming for Inuit inmates, will give Lucassie a chance to change his life.

"I think it might be really the first opportunity you'll have to get some help, look at yourself, get some coping skills and hopefully start to deal with your anger in a different kind of way."