The Toronto police officer who left Dafonte Miller blind in one eye has been sentenced to nine months in jail for the assault, Ontario Superior Court Justice Joseph Di Luca said during a hearing on Thursday, according to the CBC.
As Blavity previously reported, brothers Michael and Christian Theriault attacked then 19-year-old Miller with a pipe on December 28, 2016. Only Michael, who is a Toronto police officer, was convicted of assault while both men were acquitted of aggravated assault and obstruction of justice.
Miller lost his eye after the attack and spent months in recovery. A witness said the two men continued to beat Miller even as he laid on the ground defenseless.
Off duty Police Officer Michael Theriault has been found guilty of assault for the brutal attack on Dafonte Miller. Theriault beat Mr. Miller with a pipe, causing him to lose an eyeball. #BlackLivesMatter #BlackTwitter pic.twitter.com/fcB3LJxwUf
— Rob Gill 🗳 iwillvote.com (@vote4robgill) June 26, 2020
Despite the brutality of the attack, Di Luca denied that the assault was racially motivated during the court hearing on Thursday.
"While the Crown does not allege the assault was racially motivated, the racialized context in which the offense took place cannot be ignored. The offense committed in these circumstances undermines societal values of dignity and equality. It undermines the trust that the community — particularly the Black community — places on police officers. It must be denounced in the clearest terms," Di Luca said.
In addition to the nine-month sentence, Michael will be put on 12 months probation and will be banned from possessing or using restricted weapons for five years.
While the sentence is fairly short, Miller's lawyer, Julian Falconer, told CBC that he was happy with the verdict.
"They are groundbreaking in their clear and penetrating recognition of the social racial context that police encounters represent for victims in these kinds of cases. Dafonte feels like he had a voice," Falconer said.
"The net result of nine months in prison for Michael Theriault is not going to take away the deep distrust [Miller will] have for police for the rest of his life," Falconer added, noting that nothing would bring Miller's eye back.
The case was controversial because of the widely divergent stories from both sides. Miller says he was walking with friends in Whitby, Ontario when the Theriault brothers demanded to know why he was in the area. When he refused to answer, the two brothers chased him down and violently beat him for minutes in the front yard of a home.
He was covered in bruises and blood while trying to run, banging on the front door of a home begging for help. But the brothers caught up with him and proceeded to continued to attack him with a pipe.
James Silverthorn, the district chief with Toronto Fire Services, was the owner of the home and looked out his window to see the Theriault brothers battering Miller with the pipe.
"It was continuous. It was very hard," Silverthorn said during his testimony.
There was further outrage when it was revealed by the Toronto Star that the police allowed Theriault to handcuff Miller as he laid on the ground covered in blood. Doctors found Miller's left eye was so damaged that they had to remove it.
The police department then charged Miller with assault and refused to hand the case over to the Special Investigations Unit that generally deals with police brutality cases.
The unit took months to charge the brothers and let Miller's assault charge hang over him for a lengthy amount of time.
“We are asking you to accept that a retreating Dafonte Miller was the victim of a vicious, two-on-one assault perpetrated by Michael and Christian Theriault that left him with life-altering injuries,” prosecutor Linda Shin told the court during the trial.
Both Theriault brothers told a different story to the court, saying that they caught Miller breaking into their parent's car before chasing him down and attacking him. Their testimony drew scrutiny because they said they both feared for their lives and were only defending themselves, but later admitted to chasing Miller down and beating him with the pipe.
Michael later claimed that he planned to arrest Miller, even though he was off-duty and continued to attack him while he was on the ground.
Prosecutors repeatedly tried to downplay the racial implications of the case. The lawyer for the brothers said during his closing argument that "this case is not about race."
Protests erupted when Di Luca sided with the Theriaults in denying that the case had anything to do with race. Both of the Theriaults are white and Miller is Black.
“I want to make one thing very clear: I am not saying that race has nothing to do with this case. Indeed, I am mindful of the need to carefully consider the racialized context from which this case arises," Di Luca said during a court hearing.
"One could well ask how this matter might have unfolded if the first responders arrived at a call, late one winter evening, and observed a Black man dressed in socks with no shoes, claiming to be a police officer, asking for handcuffs while kneeling on top of a significantly injured white man,” he added.
Despite denying the racial motivations of the case, Di Luca admitted that "Michael Theriault’s initial intent was likely not to arrest Mr. Miller, but rather to capture him, and assault him.”
It is still unclear why Christian was let off with no charges, and while Miller was reportedly happy with the results of the case, activists were far less accepting of the verdict considering the permanent damage done to his eye.
“I’m in pain, I’m enraged, I’m upset,” Protester Cristal Hines told reporters in June,
But Miller, who is now 22, said he wants to move forward during a press conference in June.
"It's meant a lot to me in these last few years. It's helped me go forward. Now, we're in a situation where an officer has been held accountable to some extent. There's a lot of people who are in my position who don't get the same backing that I got and don't get to have their day to really have any vindication for what they're going through," the 22-year-old said.
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