Criminal sentencing where civil claim proceeding

R. v. Tejeda-Rosario, 2010 ONCA 367 deals with the interaction of criminal charges and a civil claim arising out of the criminal acts. 

 

Such situations occur frequently in assault cases, especially ones involving sexual assault. 

 

The Court held that the existence of a civil suit is effectively irrelevant to sentencing on related criminal charges. 

 

This is, perhaps, somewhat surprising, as a civil judgment, even if designed to make the victim whole as opposed to punishing the convict, may well fulfill some of the goals of a criminal sentence.  It may be that the best reading of the Court’s comments is to focus on the “launching of a civil suit” as opposed to the granting of a civil judgment.  The launching of the suit by itself will not impact sentencing, however, there may be scope to argue the sentence ought to be affected where a civil judgment is given.  The Court writes: 

 

 

[11]         In our view, the trial judge made two errors in principle that require our intervention.  First, he held that the civil suit “neutralizes the effect of [the complainant’s] victim impact statement for the purpose of determining an appropriate sentence”.  The fact that the respondent had launched a civil suit had little or nothing to do with the trial judge’s role in imposing sentence in the criminal proceedings.  The serious psychological and emotional impacts of this kind of offence were matters that had to be reflected in the sentence.