A man convicted in a Barrie shooting almost three years ago faced tough questions on the stand at his sentencing hearing in a Barrie courtroom this week.
Michael Williams has pleaded guilty to robbery charges relating to an attempted carjacking incident on Country Lane in June 2022. A 25-year-old Barrie man recovered from a single gunshot wound from a Glock handgun fired by Williams.
“Where do you get (your gun) from?” Crown attorney Indy Kandola asked Williams.
“A person,” Williams replied in a barely audible voice.
Kandola was trying to establish that Williams, who was subject to a weapons ban and was on probation at the time of the shooting, was immersed in gang culture and enjoys a measure of protection in jail because of that affiliation.
Kandola quizzed Williams on various Toronto-based gangs and whether he knew or crossed paths with certain figures from that murky underworld while incarcerated at the Central North Correctional Centre in Penetanguishene.
Williams largely deflected the questions by saying it was difficult to avoid gangs where he grew up.
Court had earlier heard evidence about how Williams grew up in one of Toronto’s roughest neighbourhoods.
Kandola had touched on the subject in a hearing three weeks ago and continued to portray the shooting as a case of Toronto gun violence making a rare appearance on Barrie’s streets.
The Crown’s position is that Williams enjoys a certain status in prison and therefore shouldn’t get too much extra credit on top of the 31 months he’s already spent in pretrial custody.
“No one is going to mess with someone (who’s) up on charges for shooting someone,” Kandola said to Williams.
“I’m just doing my time,” the 20-year-old said, adding most conflict in prison stems from disputes about using the phone and that he’s learned to live with harsh lockdown conditions, such as triple-bunking.
Kandola, pointing to Williams’s sculpted physical condition, continued to press him.
“You haven’t missed an arm day, it seems,” Kandola said in reference to the young man’s bulging biceps hanging out of his prison-issued garb.
“No,” Williams quietly responded.
Williams was put on the stand and cross-examined regarding an affidavit he swore regarding conditions in pretrial custody. Frustrated at the lack of information forwarded by authorities at the superjail in Penetanguishene, Kandola was questioning Williams’s position because its veracity and credibility will likely be a critical factor when Ontario Justice Cecile Applegate formally passes sentence on Feb. 6.
Kandola has asked for a sentence of 10 years, while Williams’s defence counsel, Nadia Chaabane, has countered with a request for six.
Speaking in a soft and at-times barely audible voice, Williams had to be asked to speak louder numerous times by Kandola and Applegate. Otherwise, he was by turns stoic and stretching out his upper body as though he was stiff from a heavy workout.
Aside from an intense glare toward someone in the body of the court leaving the stand, there was little to suggest Williams was moved by the proceedings.
That is until he was asked if he had anything to say as the case was about to adjourn until next Thursday.
“I want to apologize for my actions,” he said, speaking generally but without referencing the victim, who was not in court.
Responding to follow-up questions from the judge, Williams said he wanted to join his father working in construction when he gets out of prison.
When that is depends largely on how Applegate will apply pre-sentence credit for his 31 months already in custody and how his Toronto charges play out after next week’s hearing in Barrie.
At the first sentencing hearing three weeks ago, court heard how Williams faces another trial in Toronto beginning on Feb. 10 on unspecified charges.
The gulf in the sentence request speaks for itself. If the defence requests regarding various enhancements are applied in full, Williams will get credit for about four years, largely walking him to his statuary release date.
His strenuous objections on cross-examination aside, Kandola conceded Williams is entitled to some enhanced credit but was adamant it should be at the lower end.
“It’s time being served by a man who has already pleaded guilty,” said the veteran Crown attorney.
