Judge urged to deliver life sentence to two-time killer

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This article was published 20/04/2022 (981 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CONVICTED for the second time of stabbing a man to death, Rodney Williams should go to prison for life, with no chance of parole for 10 years, a judge was told Wednesday.

“The fact that Mr. Williams has killed twice cannot be ignored,” Crown attorney Chantal Boutin told Justice Shauna McCarthy. “This is an integral part of the circumstances you must weigh and consider.”

McCarthy convicted Williams of manslaughter in the June 2019 death of 51-year-old Robert Donaldson after a trial last spring.

Williams stood trial for second-degree murder, but McCarthy convicted him of the lesser charge, ruling he was too intoxicated by methamphetamine to form the intent to kill.

Donaldson died before his now-two-year-old daughter was born. His common-law partner said they had just bought a house together in Winnipeg a year before his death and blended their families.

“This senseless crime caused extreme pain to every family member,” Jessika Pennock wrote in a victim impact statement read in court.

“That one act of hatred and violence by you ruined our future,” Pennock said. “What you did tore (apart) everything we worked hard to build together.”

Court heard at trial Donaldson and a friend were walking near the intersection of Sherbrook Street and Sara Avenue, shortly before 9 p.m., when they crossed paths with Williams and another man. Williams yelled at Donaldson before pulling a knife from his pants, and chased Donaldson and his friend north toward Sara Avenue.

Williams cut Davidson once in the ribs before a passing motorist tried to intervene and gave Donaldson and his friend a baseball bat and steering wheel anti-theft device (club) to defend themselves.

As Donaldson’s friend and the motorist tried to keep Williams at bay, Williams broke through their defences and stabbed Donaldson several more times, once fatally in the chest.

Two witnesses provided first aid, but he died minutes later.

“They watched the life drain from the eyes of a man they had never met and will never forget,” Boutin said Wednesday.

Williams ran back to his Sherbrook Street apartment, where police arrested him minutes later.

Williams testified he had been on a three-day, sleepless meth binge, when, just minutes before the attack, he snorted two more lines of meth and left his apartment with the idea of buying cigarettes. He claimed to have almost no memory of what came after.

Sentences for manslaughter have the widest range in the Criminal Code, from probation to life in prison.

Defence lawyer Matthew Munce urged McCarthy to sentence Williams to no more than 15 years in prison.

In 2009, Williams, then 24, was sentenced to 18 years in prison after pleading guilty to manslaughter for stabbing a man to death three years earlier, following a party at Hollow Water First Nation.

Court at the time heard Williams stabbed Leslie Moneyas five times, including four times in the back. He was granted statutory release in 2017.

A pre-sentence report prepared following his latest conviction found Williams showed “an apparent lack of insight about his anger management and substance abuse issues,” Boutin said, adding he denied having any problems with anger or aggression.

“Regardless of what Mr. Williams thinks, he has an anger management problem,” the Crown said.

Williams will return to court for sentencing June 13.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca