A Chelmsford woman charged with aggravated assault after an attack on her neighbour has been sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison.
Jessie Brave was arrested Nov. 22, 2024 after stabbing her neighbour, Josee Rouleau, in a violent attack that left Rouleau with what the judge on the sentencing described as “permanent disability.”
Ontario Court Justice Pierre Bradley read his decision orally to the court on Jan. 15.
It was a balance, he said, between what was best for justice, and what was best for Brave, who not only faces mental health struggles, he said, but also violence and suicidal ideations while at the jail, which was also routinely on lockdown and significantly overcrowded, said Bradley.
The judge in the case, Ontario Court Justice Pierre Bradley, read an oral decision to the court on Jan. 15.
And while the Crown, Brittanny Butler, was pushing for six years in a penitentiary, Brave’s defence counsel, Micheal Michel, was asking for three-and-a-half less time served.
Michel also requested what’s known as a Summers Credit, which is quite common. What is less so is his request for the Duncan Credit, which is a precedent that informs sentencing based on time spent in pre-custody conditions.
You can read more about Summers and Duncan credits here, but, in essence, it means that every day spent in pre-sentence custody counts as one-and-a-half days (under the Summers credit). In this case, the rarely used Duncan credit was also applied, meaning two days for every day served.
So, 4.5 years is 1,643 days and she served 419 days in pre-sentence custody, at the Sudbury District Jail waiting for the case to move its way through the courts.
While she was there, she was subject to lockdown for the majority of her stay due to staff shortages and overcrowding.
Bradley granted both the Summers and the Duncan credits.
He said that after considering the affidavits presented on Brave’s behalf attesting to her pre-sentence experience, the jail had been severely overcrowded and under lockdown with barely 30 minutes outside per day, but also, said Bradley, “she experienced physical violence from other inmates.”
As such, he totalled the time spent in jail to 749 days, and “the accused shall be incarcerated for a further 894 days,” he said.
Originally charged with attempted murder, as well as weapons charges, Brave pleaded guilty to aggravated assault in the case after negotiations between Michel and the Crown.
The court heard through an agreed statement of facts on June 10 that Brave, now 34, and the victim, Josee Rouleau, were neighbours on a floor of an apartment building on Errington Avenue in Chelmsford.
It was on Nov. 22, 2024, at approximately 7 a.m. that Brave left her unit to leave a note on Rouleau’s door complaining about Rouleau’s dogs.
A short time later, a neighbouring tenant on the floor heard the commotion between Brave and Rouleau, and came out to find Rouleau lying on the hall floor, bleeding. Rouleau required serious medical care and was taken to Health Sciences North by ambulance.
Sudbury police were dispatched to Rouleau's unit at 7:30 a.m. after receiving several 911 calls, including one from Rouleau’s boyfriend, who witnessed the attack. They also received one from Brave herself, "indicating she had stabbed someone.”
Police arrested Brave “without incident” in her apartment about 8:05 a.m.
Later, security video from the apartment building where Brave and the victim lived offered more context to the interaction.
Sudbury.com spoke with Brave’s mother briefly after the Jan. 16 hearing and she confirmed the video, played in court on Dec. 4, showed Rouleau attacking Brave and tossing her to the floor, before the two women began fighting. Rouleau’s boyfriend then intervened and broke up the fight.
Brave, however, later went to Rouleau’s apartment and stabbed her multiple times.
In his decision, Bradley referenced the mental health struggles Brave had been diagnosed with early in life, including Borderline Personality Disorder, and spoke to her struggles with suicidal ideations, which he told the court was significantly worsened while she was incarcerated. She was placed on suicide watch while in jai.
Bradley said she also expressed “deep remorse.”
And while there is a list of considerations that guides judges in sentencing, it is also one that is subject to the experience and understanding of the law held by a judge.
Bradley said that after reviewing the case law, he believed a sentence in the range of four to six years was appropriate. “However, sentencing ranges should be viewed as flexible guidelines and the court should encourage individualized sentencing based on all circumstances.”
He said it was the belief of the court that Brave’s mental health challenges are relevant, both as a mitigating factor behind the crime and because of the harm that jail might do to someone at a crossroads in their rehabilitation.
“The court is of the belief that this race of mental health challenges are relevant to collateral consequences, because they increase because they increase the severity of incarceration, which favors a sentence reduction to achieve proportionality rehabilitation,” he said.
Bradley said that because sentencing should be focused both on denunciation and deterrence as well as on rehabilitation, he considered the effects of jail on her ability to move forward in life.
He also ordered Brave to submit her DNA to the national database, and a 10-year ban on possession of any weapons.
Jenny Lamothe is a reporter with Sudbury.com, covering vulnerable and marginalized populations, as well as housing issues and the justice system.