Kevin Lumley has narrowly avoided going to jail in the past for getting behind the wheel while being banned from driving.
But his luck has finally run out.
Defense lawyer Ken Marley said his client knew he was banned from driving during the most recent incident, which he admitted is aggravating.
“But it is still something which, in the context of his whole record, I’m asking your honor to find that a period of immediate incarceration’s not necessary,” he said to the judge.
Marley suggests four months of house arrest instead.
“Your honour, it’s the Crown’s respectful submission that a real jail sentence that – not one served in the community – is appropriate in these circumstances,” assistant Crown attorney Nicole Godfrey responded.
Godfrey asked for two months behind bars. Justice Anne McFadyen sided with the Crown.
“I do believe a period of immediate incarceration is the appropriate response to this offense,” she said.
But she cut the suggested award in half to one month. Lumley was led out of the courtroom Monday and led to the Sarnia Jail to start serving his 30-day term.
Before leaving, the court heard Lumley told a probation officer who wrote a pre-sentence report he foolishly agreed to do a favor for a friend, who needed to get to a pharmacy to get their prescriptions.
“He realized he should not have been operating the vehicle,” Marley said.
Lumley’s prior criminal record was quite dated, Marley added, although he did have a similar recent conviction and was fined instead of jailed.
“That involved a very brief operation of a motor vehicle in a parking lot of a commercial establishment,” he said. “It did not involve operation on a roadway. It was nonetheless a public place.”
Lumley was a prohibited driver at the time of a Dec. 23, 2019, crash in the parking lot of the Real Canadian Superstore in Sarnia. In October 2020, he was fined $1,500 and had another two years added to his driving ban.
Marley said at the time of that conviction his client was only briefly behind the wheel and was doing a favor for a friend.
“But for those limited facts, a court would seriously consider a jail sentence here,” Justice Deborah Austin said at the time.
“This offense is different,” Marley conceded Monday, noting his client drove on a highway to take his friend to the pharmacy.
Godfrey pointed out it’s Lumley’s third conviction.
“These offenses reflect what I would suggest is a disregard for orders of this court and orders of the Ministry of Transportation in relation to the privilege of driving,” she said.
She added he was recently convicted of driving while disqualified and, although the details were minimal, he received another year-long suspension.
“And during the course of that year-long suspension, he commits this offense,” she said.
Concerns about where the Sarnia resident would live while serving a conditional sentence due to housing instability and a lack of a letter proving he has a job in the construction industry were factors in the judge’s decision this time to send Lumley to jail.
“It’s something the court must be assured of before I endorse such a conditional sentence,” McFadyen said.
She also added a further three years and 30 days to his driving ban.
Other charges were withdrawn.