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Richard Martin, pictured here with Paul Fromm and who plead guilty yesterday to charges related to ethnic intimidation, was sentenced to 9 months in prison today which will be followed up by three years probation upon his release (the other guy, Shane Gill, received 6 months). With the time he has already served, Martin will be behind bars for a little under 8 months.

Looks good on him.

Now, for those who might claim that he's in jail simply for saying a few bad words, consider the following:

1. He systematically intimidated a woman, her child and her mother, apparently for weeks.
2. He intimated he would shoot them on a number of occasions; whether he had the ability to carry out the threat isn't relevant, but the terror he intended to result from his threat is.
3. He and Gill followed this woman and her child to her home and started banging on the door.

He might have gotten off on arson and vandalism charges, but at least he's getting put away for a few months.


Judge jails ‘abhorrent’ racists Barbara Brown, Thu Sep 16 2010

An Ontario Court judge says there are not enough words to describe two men who spewed hateful racial slurs at a young black woman as she walked down the street with an 11-year-old girl.

“Despicable, abhorrent and heinous are only a few that come to mind,” said Ontario Court Justice Richard Jennis of the July 16 incident.

Shane Gill, 38, a sheetmetal worker, and Richard Martin, 23, an unemployed labourer, pleaded guilty Tuesday to criminal harassment after they taunted the woman and child with the words: “We hate niggers.”

The judge sentenced Gill Thursday morning to six months in jail followed by three years on probation.
After pretrial custody, Gill has four months and 27 days remaining on his sentence.

Martin was handed a nine-month jail term, followed by the maximum three years on probation. After credit for pretrial custody, Martin has seven months and 20 days left to serve.

Assistant Crown attorney Michael Fox had called for the stiff jail terms, arguing that it was an aggravating factor on sentencing that the crimes were purely motivated by racial hatred and the colour of the victims’ skin.

Fox had sought the higher sentence for Martin because his harassment had been ongoing for several weeks and had targeted the young woman when she was home with two young nieces.

“If there had been any actual physical violence, this sentence could have been measured in years and not in months,” Jennis told the convicted men.

The woman who was target of the harassment said outside the courtroom that she was impressed by the way Hamilton police handled her complaint and by the judge’s reasons for sentence.

“Yes, I’ve been really impressed with the police response and the sensitivity shown and the professionalism,” she said.

“I think the judge’s sentence was fair. His consideration for the two men was fair and it does send a message that this is wrong,” she said.

bbrown@thespec.com
905-526-3494