| Chris Geoghegan says he doesn’t regret shoving a pie into Ralph Klein’s face during a Stampede breakfast last July despite the fact that he has been sentenced to jail time for it.
On September 20, the 25-year-old activist was sentenced to 30 days in jail, three months probation and 40 hours of community service. The sentence has been dubbed as draconian by some observers, who question whether the incident would’ve been treated as seriously if the victim wasn’t Premier Klein. Geoghegan plans to appeal the sentence.
Geoghegan says he’s sorry if he physically hurt Klein (the premier says he was hit so hard his ears were ringing), but he says throwing pies at politicians as a form of political protest is a legitimate tradition with a long history around the world and he’s amazed that he’s going to be locked up for 30 days as a punishment for it.
"I think it’s a totally valid form of political dissent. I don’t think the traditional ways of protest are working anymore because you’re seeing protestors shut out of meetings… politicians can just be sheltered away from the people they’re affecting," he says.
Geoghegan says he decided to pie Klein as a protest against "the dramatic division between rich and poor in the province," the Klein’s government’s support of some private health care, the lack of affordable housing and inadequate funding to post-secondary education in the province.
However, Provincial Court of Alberta Judge Terence Semenuk says in his written decision that, even if the pieing was a means of political expression, it was a violent act and therefore not protected by the constitution.
"The nature of the assault is serious. It is no mere common assault…. Not only has the premier’s freedom of expression… been violated, but future public accessibility to an otherwise very approachable premier, has been curtailed," wrote Semenuk.
Semenuk said that jail was necessary because Geoghegan didn’t express any remorse. He declared that Geoghegan is a "danger to society, and particularly that segment of society that does not accord with his world views…. Those in the community like-minded to the accuser should know that ‘it is not only a pie’ and that doing what the accused did can only result in a gaol (jail) sentence."
Semenuk pointed to the fact that Geoghegan has also been charged with disturbing the peace and trespassing after he and several other people allegedly disrupted a meeting of the group Concerned Christian Coalition Inc. in Calgary earlier this year. Geoghegan hasn’t gone to court yet on those charges.
Semenuk did point out in his ruling that in some cases where pies have been thrown at politicians no charges were ever laid. But he referred to a 30-day prison sentence that was handed out to a man who threw a pie at Jean Chrétien in 2000 in Prince Edward Island. A higher court threw out the sentence, finding jail time to be inappropriate.
Klein’s spokesperson, Marissa Etmanski, says the premier has no comment about the sentence because it’s being appealed.
After the incident happened Klein told the media, "It hurt. He slapped me. It doesn’t say anything about politics. It says something about the stupidity of this young person, who will now have the criminal record and who will be in trouble, I think, at his university."
Calgary District Labour Council executive secretary Gord Christie attended Geoghegan’s trial and sentencing and says he was "astounded" by the sentence. "He was trying to stand up for so many voiceless people in this province," says Christie.
University of Alberta law professor Sanjeev Anand says the sentence was "heavy" considering the circumstances.
Anand says it’s not unheard of across Canada for people who commit much more serious crimes, such as drunk driving causing death, sexual assault or even manslaughter, to receive conditional sentences that don’t involve jail time.
"I think that the public will probably be wondering if it was the victim’s stature that played a part," says Anand. "If I was speaking at an event and someone pied me, a 33-year-old law professor, even if it hurt I doubt the person would be jailed."
Meanwhile, Geoghegan says he achieved his objective because there were many letters written to newspapers about the pieing and lots of news stories and editorials published as well.
"It forced people to actively defend his policies or say, No, he deserved it," he says. |
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