By Olivia Murray
Jesse Garlow, a violent criminal with a long rap sheet, was caught driving around with a crack pipe in his lap, a modified “killing machine” firearm in his backseat (while under a firearm prohibition for previous crimes), a flamethrower in his trunk, $5,000 in cash that he swore he won from gambling, and a small scale (undermining his gambling winnings story), but has avoided a prison sentence because he’s an “indigenous” man with “intergenerational trauma” and therefore, in the mind of female judge Brenda Green in Ontario, Canada, he has no agency, and deserves no additional punishment than time served. From a National Post report via MSN, here’s Green’s “reasoning” (if it can even be called that) for her ruling:
‘I have determined that systemic and background factors have affected the degree of responsibility of this offender. Mr. Garlow is the personification of intergenerational trauma. I cannot imagine more sympathetic circumstances or mitigating factors that cry out for some compassion. Punishing him with a further period of incarceration for the sake of the common good would be unjust….’
The prosecutor was asking for three-and-a-half years in prison, but Green decided that the time Garlow had already been incarcerated while awaiting his trial was punishment enough. Garlow’s lawyer argued that his client’s “personal history” somehow “attenuates his moral responsibility” for his criminal actions, and Green agreed, saying, “There is an undeniable link between his criminal record and his experiences as an Indigenous person.”
I’d like to know, are these the same type of people who are working within the system to enact gun control measures? Probably. So Garlow can get caught with a modified machine gun—but a normal contributing citizen makes an innocent mistake on paperwork and faces charges?
“Intergenerational trauma”? Does this also apply to the white Canadians who have, for generations, been taxed to death to support mass migration from the third world? What about the white Canadians who lost their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers in the two world wars? The white Canadians whose parents were thrown in jail for protesting Covid-19 tyranny? White Canadians whose family members have been murdered by MAID? I doubt it
When the justice system accepts a person’s past as a “mitigating factor” when determining consequences for committing serious crimes, that system is entirely defunct. Let’s acknowledge this for exactly what it is: it’s preferential treatment for being not white.