Five-time impaired driver’s house arrest sentence overturned for jail time in Brampton

The conditional sentence with house arrest of a five-time convicted impaired driver has been overturned, leading to jail time for a Brampton man caught driving the wrong way down a Mississauga street.

Back in March, Joseph LeClaire of Brampton was sentenced after pleading guilty to impaired operation of a conveyance and drive while disqualified.

The charges came from a 2020 incident where he drove the wrong way down a busy Mississauga street, leaving a trail of sparks “with only the rim on the front passenger side,” according to a written decision from Superior Court Justice Jennifer Woollcombe.

And while the impaired driving conviction was LeClaire’s fifth and should have come with a sentence of at least four months, he was initially handed down a four-month conditional sentence with house arrest by the Ontario Court of Justice.

That sentence was overturned last month by the Superior Court.

“There was no legal basis upon which to refuse to impose the mandatory minimum sentence required by the Criminal Code in this case,” Woollcombe said of the lower court’s conditional sentence.

“I view it as an affront to the administration of justice for a judge to choose to knowingly disregard and decline to follow the law that must be applied,” Woollcombe said of Ontario Court Justice Kathy J. Jalali’s decision “to impose a sentence that she knew was illegal.”

Woollcombe called the four-month sentence “extremely lenient” considering the circumstances of LeClaire’s case.

LeClaire has medical issues and a history of substance abuse, and had four prior impaired driving convictions, according to the decision. He was already under a driving ban when he took his wife’s keys on Nov. 27, 2020 and went driving in Mississauga, leading to multiple calls to police.

He was caught by police with a fentanyl patch on his body, and officers found a powder in the truck that was later identified as fentanyl.

The Crown had sought four months in jail, a mandatory three-year driving prohibition and a one-year driving probation, with a requirement that LeClaire attend and actively participate in counselling.

Instead, LeClaire was given a conditional sentence with house arrest, and allowed exceptions for court, meeting his supervisor, and attending “medical appointments or for surgeries,” and for three hours once a week to attend to the necessities of life. He was also given probation for two years and a three-year driving prohibition.

LeClaire’s new sentence of four months in jail was handed down on July 15. He was ordered to surrender to the Maplehurst Correctional Complex by July 17.