A recent court decision out of Ontario reveals how judges’ hands are tied when it comes to sentencing hard-core criminals.
Justice Craig Brannagan was sentencing Justin Anderson for repeatedly flashing a handgun at a woman he forcibly confined for a week the spring of 2024 while he travelled through the province selling drugs, and for later terrorizing another woman at gunpoint he believed to be an informant. Both the Crown and defence lawyers in Anderson’s case had recommended he be sentenced to 10 and a half years in prison. The judge dubbed their position “very lenient,” but he went along with it, anyway.
Brannagan accepted that he was “not free to interfere on the basis that I may have a different view of what the sentence could or should be. I may only interfere where the proposed sentence would bring the administration of justice into disrepute or is otherwise contrary to the public interest.”
Joint sentencing recommendations are “vital to the operation of the criminal justice system,” Brannagan said, but they “are not sacrosanct. Trial judges may depart from them.”
The test for departing from them “is, however, ‘undeniably high,’” said the judge.
He acceded to the joint recommendation from both the Crown and defence and sentenced Anderson to 10 and a half years in prison.
The 34-year-old pleaded guilty in the Ontario Court of Justice to nine indictable offences including forcibly confining two women, pointing a firearm, possession of methamphetamine for the purpose of trafficking, breaching a weapons prohibition order, and possessing a firearm with a defaced serial number.
“While I find that this sentence is a generous one, perhaps even very lenient considering the circumstances of the offences and the offender, I am unable to find that the joint submission is ‘so unhinged from the circumstances of the offence and the offender’ that accepting it would lead reasonable and informed persons to ‘view it as a break down in the proper functioning of the criminal justice system,’” Brannagan wrote in a recent decision out of Barrie.
The court heard that a woman identified only by the initials R.C. met Anderson in May 2024 through a friend in Belleville.
During the last week in May 2024 Anderson forced her to “travel with him throughout Ontario, while he engaged in drug trafficking activities and made cash deliveries,” according to Brannagan’s decision, dated Dec. 11.
“Throughout that week, Mr. Anderson carried a handgun in his waistband. He would repeatedly flash the handgun towards R.C. as a means of controlling and intimidating her. He controlled her movement and coerced her to stay with him while he engaged in repeated criminal activity.”
She was with Anderson on May 31, 2024, when he trafficked in a firearm, said the decision. “R.C. later recalled to police having seen Mr. Anderson assume control over a firearm wrapped in a pink sweater.”
The woman managed to escape Anderson in Vaughan and called police. “She returned to Belleville safely by train.”
Anderson drove from Vaughan back to Belleville “to regain control over R.C. By that time, however, the Belleville Police had been contacted and Mr. Anderson fled to evade his arrest.”
Anderson “was bound by multiple weapons prohibition orders” at the time, said the decision.
Barrie Police learned on June 1, 2024, that there was a warrant out for Anderson’s arrest in Belleville.
“He was known to be the driver of a blue four-door BMW.”
Barrie Police found the BMW just before 5 p.m. that day parked in a plaza parking lot on Grove Street East. “They initiated surveillance.”
That night, a woman identified only as T.J. was hanging out with her boyfriend J.L. at a home near the parked BMW when they got in an argument, said the decision. “In anger, J.L. told the occupants of the residence that T.J. was a ‘rat,’ alleging that she had provided information to the police concerning drug trafficking activities in the City of Barrie.”
Anderson was there and heard the accusation that T.J. was an informant, said the decision. “Mr. Anderson became enraged by this. He pulled out a brown and grey handgun and pointed it at T.J., numerous times, forcibly confining her in this manner for approximately one hour.”
While pointing the handgun at T.J., “he told her that he was going to rape her and force her into the sex trade as a prostitute. T.J. feared for her life.”
She fled around 11 p.m.
“She jumped over numerous fences and hid beneath a motor vehicle. Police located her several hours later.”
Soon after she took off, Barrie Police saw Anderson return to his BMW and arrested him.
They found a loaded CZ 9 mm handgun tucked into his waistband, as well as a satchel that contained 429 grams of methamphetamine; 64 grams of cocaine; 19 grams of fentanyl; 948 oxycodone pills; a dozen hydromorphone pills; and 60 pills of a synthetic cannabinoid called nabilone, said the decision. “Mr. Anderson’s satchel also contained $1,185 in cash, and a small scale.”
In the BMW’s trunk, police “discovered a break-action rifle with a defaced serial number.”
Anderson “has a lengthy criminal record, beginning in 2015 with entries consistent through to 2025,” said the decision. “He has upward of 30 convictions for various types of offences, including breaches of court orders, crimes of dishonesty, property offences, dangerous operation of a motor vehicle, flight police, assault police, weapons possession and, most seriously, aggravated assault.”
Anderson’s pre-sentence report indicates he “was raised in a pro-criminal environment that included exposure to criminal activity and drug use from a young age. His upbringing was void of structure and positive role-modeling, leaving him to fend for himself. His biological parents separated when he was just one year old.”
When Anderson was three years old, his mother went to his father’s place to pick up her son, said the decision. “She found Justin playing with a bag of cocaine.”
The father of four by three different women “is not permitted to have contact with any of his children,” said the decision.
Anderson admitted “that his peer group consists solely of individuals involved in the drug and gun subculture. He advised that he does not like police. He advised that he regularly uses cocaine and methamphetamine, acknowledging that he has a drug addiction, and that he supports his addiction through drug trafficking. He has never sought treatment for his addictions.”
He reported arming himself with guns “for protection while dealing drugs, noting the unpredictability of people involved in the drug subculture. He readily acknowledged the inherent dangers of guns, accepting their possession as necessary for someone like him ‘being in (the) drug game.’”
The judge found Anderson’s attitude callous. “He demonstrates a marked indifference for the lives or safety of others. He is deeply entrenched in the criminal lifestyle, readily acknowledging his ongoing criminal associations within a subculture that identifies itself through illicit drug trafficking and firearm possession. In my view, he fits the description of a true criminal outlaw.”
The author of Anderson’s pre-sentence report “opined that Justin Anderson is at a high-risk to reoffend,” Brannagan said. “That is a finding with which I wholeheartedly agree and adopt.”
Both the women Anderson confined declined to take part in his sentencing.
“I find that in both cases, Mr. Anderson used a firearm to threaten, intimidate, control, and strike fear into his female victims,” said the judge. “The harm suffered by T.J. and R.C. is both apparent and undisputable.”
Anderson’s “role as a trafficker of hard drugs is pitiless and indifferent to the destructive effects his poisons have on our communities,” Brannagan said.
“While acknowledging that Mr. Anderson is a user himself, I find that the primary motivation behind his drug trafficking activities was for profit; the sheer quantity of hard drugs found on his person is evidence of that. Mr. Anderson was effectively a travelling pharmacy.”
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