A former North Vancouver man convicted of impaired driving has decided he’d rather do the time than pay the fine.
A provincial court judge handed Lee Hart, 41, a $1,500 fine in 2011 after he pleaded guilty to driving with a blood alcohol level over .08.
Hart appeared via video back in North Vancouver provincial court on Thursday (April 7) to request that his fine, which he never paid, be converted to jail time.
Except Hart is already in jail, serving a six-year sentence for manslaughter. In November 2021, he pleaded guilty to the charge in Victoria provincial court. In 2018, he and a friend attacked another man with hammers, killing him in a Metchosin driveway, in what the judge described as an act of vigilantism.
In court this week, Hart said he wanted to have a fresh start when he is eventually released.
“I'm trying to get my life sorted out and be with my family,” he said.
The unusual request left the Crown lawyer consulting her Criminal Code of Canada to see if such a mechanism was even possible so long after the fact.
Ultimately, the court concluded it was.
Assuming Hart were to earn the minimum wage and work eight hours per day, the fine worked out to an additional 12 days for him to serve.
Hart asked if those extra days could be served concurrently with his manslaughter sentence, meaning they would not extend his jail term at all. The Crown opposed that request, given there was no connection between the impaired driving conviction and the manslaughter one.
