A British Columbia judge who sentenced a man to serve time in the community, rather than jail, for stalking his ex-wife says he would rather put the man behind bars to protect the victim, citing serious concerns for her safety with her ex-husband at large.
Justice David Patterson, writing in his decision earlier this month, said he was bound, however, by the joint sentencing submission of the Crown prosecutor and defence lawyer in the case. Both parties recommended that Christopher Todd Powers, who pleaded guilty to harassing his former partner, should instead serve a conditional sentence in the community followed by 18 months of probation.
“The law requires me to endorse the joint submission presented to the court,” Patterson wrote in his Feb. 18 decision. “I do so with grave concerns about the safety of the victim.”
Powers, 63, and the woman separated in 2021 after a 30-year marriage, the court heard.
“The victim told Mr. Powers that she did not want him in her life at all,” the judge summarized. “She wanted no contact with him. She wanted the relationship over.”
But two years after the marriage ended, in October 2023, Powers began showing up at his ex-wife’s home and at the home of her new partner. “On one occasion, he went so far as to bang aggressively on the front door of the victim’s new partner’s residence and demanded to speak with the victim,” the judge wrote.
‘You broke me’
The confrontational behaviour came to a head in January 2024, when the victim – whose identity is protected under a court-imposed publication ban – left a grocery store in Vernon to find Powers waiting next to her car in the parking lot.
“Mr. Powers told the victim he had been waiting one hour for her,” the judge wrote.
“She entered her vehicle, but Mr. Powers prevented her from closing the car’s door. He tried to take her mobile telephone and car key out of her hand to stop her from leaving. A compassionate and good person saw what was happening and intervened on the victim’s behalf.”
The woman was able to flee the scene and call the police the following day, complaining that Powers would routinely drive by her residence and often park his car across the street to watch her home.
She also provided investigators a record of their email communications between Oct. 1, 2023, and Feb. 13, 2024, during which Powers had sent her a total of 3,540 email messages, the court heard.
“Most were short and sometimes repeatedly sent,” the judge wrote. “Common themes of the email messages included, ‘You broke me,’ ‘You obviously don’t understand what you did to me,’ and ‘You cheated me, huge… weren’t you stupid.’”
Harassment charge
Provincial prosecutors charged Powers with criminal harassment. He pleaded guilty in June 2024 and was bound by a police undertaking not to be in the vicinity of his ex-wife or have any communication with her.
But less than a month later, Powers called her repeatedly from different phone numbers, leaving seven messages on her voicemail, the court heard.
“Each of the voicemail messages was approximately five minutes in length,” the judge wrote. “They were a rambling collection of messages detailing Mr. Powers' relationship with the victim, as seen from Mr. Powers' point of view.”
The woman provided the messages to the RCMP, who arrested Powers and placed him on another undertaking ordering him not to have contact with the victim. But the voicemail messages continued, with Powers repeatedly telling his former partner that “he wanted to have a relationship with her,” according to the court.
Powers was arrested again for breaching the police undertakings, this time spending a night in police custody before appearing in front of a judge the following day. The judge cancelled the police undertakings and released Powers on the conditions that he not contact the victim or be within 100 metres of her home, workplace or anywhere she happens to be pending his trial.
Arrests for breaching orders
Two weeks later, the victim reported to police that she received a letter from Powers but had not opened it.
“The RCMP took the letter from the victim and opened it,” the judge wrote. “The letter had a note dated August 27, 2024, and three dried flowers. In the note, Mr. Powers reminisced about Hawaii and asked the victim to return home to live with him.”
Powers was arrested for breaching the terms of his release order. The following day, he appeared before a judge, who released him from custody again, this time under a new release order covering all four of the charges against him – one count of criminal harassment, two counts of breaching a police undertaking and one count of breaching the conditions of a court-imposed release order.
Powers kept calling, leaving a dozen voicemails on his former partner’s phone the following month, each of them approximately five minutes long, the court heard. A judge issued a warrant for his arrest and he was taken into custody on Nov. 25, 2024.
Powers was held after a bail hearing and remained in custody for 88 days before his sentence was delivered in a Vernon courtroom.
Victim impact statement
The ex-wife submitted a victim impact statement to the court, describing the document as “the hardest communication I’ve ever had to write.” In it, she complained of “decades of brainwashing” and “verbal and emotional abuse” in her former relationship with Powers.
She said she now lives a “hyper vigilant” lifestyle, changing her travel and shopping routines, fearing she will run into him whenever she leaves her home. “I have been altering my regular behaviour to accommodate his poor behaviour,” she wrote. “I get anxious the rare time I need to take streets that I know he uses in case we cross paths.”
“Despite a protection order, and criminal harassment charges, there’s obvious occasions where he feels he’s exempt from court orders (as my record of incidents has shown),” she continued. “He believes he is entitled to continue to get his message through to me, and that I am obligated to ‘help’ him with his issues because everything that is happening is my fault and I ‘owe’ him.”
‘He will likely continue to reoffend’
A psychological report was provided to the court before sentencing, saying Powers suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, as well as feelings of depression and anxiety.
“He minimizes his behaviour in the offences, contributing them to attempting to resolve issues from the relationship and passing information to the victim he believes is helpful for her and her future,” the report stated.
“With no intervention or management plan in place, Mr. Powers' risk of reoffending in the next six months is high,” according to the authors of the report, who used a 30-point manual, known as the Guidelines for Stalking Assessment and Management, to determine his likelihood of continuing the behaviour.
“Mr. Powers has breached his conditions multiple times, and if the distress caused by his OCD and the anger caused by his misperceptions are not managed then he will likely continue to reoffend,” the authors wrote.
“Given that Mr. Powers' symptoms are currently unmanaged, and Mr. Powers has recently stated to police that he cannot leave the victim alone, Mr. Powers is likely to re-engage in harassing behaviour as soon as possible,” the report concluded.
Joint submissions ‘unhinged’
In January, the sentencing judge rejected two separate joint submissions from the Crown and defence lawyers.
The first submission called for an 18-month conditional sentence, followed by 18 months of probation. The plan would have barred Powers from being within 20 kilometres of Vernon and prohibit him from possessing weapons, contacting the victim or using email without first providing his account details to a probation supervisor.
“A CSO (conditional sentence order) or probation order without electronic monitoring was a non-starter,” the judge wrote, adjourning the case and asking the two sides to return with a sentencing plan that required Powers to wear a monitoring bracelet to verify his whereabouts.
“In my opinion, the proposed global sentence would have brought the administration of justice into disrepute or was otherwise contrary to the public interest,” the judge wrote.
“I believed that the proposed joint submission was so unhinged from the circumstances of the offences and Mr. Powers that its acceptance would lead reasonable and informed persons, aware of all the relevant circumstances, including the importance of promoting certainty in resolution discussions, to believe that the proper functioning of the justice system had broken down.”
‘Actual jail sentence’ preferred
A technical report was ordered to determine whether Powers was a suitable candidate for an ankle bracelet while living at his brother’s mobile home.
However, the report found the mobile had little to no cellular reception for the monitoring system to work, and the trailer park supervisor said it was unlikely Powers could remain at the residence for more than a few weeks.
Again, the judge rejected the joint submission due to the negative suitability report. “In my view, no electronic monitoring meant there would not be sufficient protection for the victim moving forward,” he wrote.
When the hearing reconvened this month, it was determined that Powers could live in Surrey and wear a monitoring bracelet while serving a conditional sentence of 18 months – minus credit for time already served in custody – followed by 18 months of probation.
Despite accepting the final submission, the judge wrote that he would prefer “an actual jail sentence in the nine-month to two years less one day range” followed by three years of probation.
Under the terms of his release, Powers must not be within 20 kilometres of Vernon, must not possess weapons and must wear an electronic monitor. He is prohibited from using any telephone or email address that isn’t first identified in writing to his probation officer. The judge also ordered Powers to provide a DNA sample to the criminal offender database.
