No jail time for witness intimidation
Dennis Jan Van Wissen, 58, of Burton, was granted conditional sentence Wednesday for trying to get former base boss to change story over workplace threat
A Burton man who tried to intimidate his former supervisor at Base Gagetown to get him to retract his statements about a workplace threat incident won’t be going to jail for his crimes.
Dennis Jan Van Wissen, 58, of Lindsay Lane, appeared before Fredericton provincial court Judge Natalie LeBlanc on Wednesday for his sentencing hearing for crimes of obstructing justice by attempting to dissuade a witness and attempting to intimidate that same witness.
The judge found him guilty after trial earlier this year.
Evidence at trial showed Van Wissen, a retired member of the Canadian Forces, was working as a civilian employee at Base Gagetown in 2019 when he filed a workplace-violence complaint against Capt. Mitchell Hargreaves, a superior.
The defendant participated in a mediation session Dec. 10, 2019, as a result of that complaint, but it quickly went sideways when he burst into a rage and threatened to harm Hargreaves.
Van Wissen was charged with uttering threats, and he eventually pleaded guilty in Fredericton provincial court to that crime.
However, just ahead of his sentencing hearing in January 2021, the defendant dropped off a letter and accompanying documents for Major Rodney Normore, another supervisor in the same area of the base.
Normore was present when Van Wissen had threatened Hargreaves and had been expected to testify at the trial on that charge, which didn’t happen because Van Wissen changed his plea to guilty.
The packet he’d dropped off for Normore - the day before he was to be sentenced - demanded Normore attend the sentencing hearing to recant his story about the threat.
Van Wissen’s letter said if Normore didn’t co-operate, it would cost him his job.
“You are going to cease your own Canadian military career,” it stated.
Though Normore didn’t capitulate, LeBlanc found Van Wissen’s actions were clearly intended to intimidate him and to alter the outcome of his previous criminal case.
Van Wissen no longer works on base.
The prosecution was seeking jail time to denounce such conduct aimed at defeating the course of justice, but the defence had recommended a community-based sentence, either probation or a conditional sentence to be served at home.
‘A somewhat atypical first-time offender’
In rendering her decision on sentence Wednesday, LeBlanc said Van Wissen’s case is a unique one, and she hadn’t been able to find any precedents that were similar.
She noted Van Wissen was given a conditional discharge for the original threat conviction, meaning he has no prior criminal record as he appears before her for sentencing this time.
As such, the judge said, she had to treat him as a first-time offender.
LeBlanc said a key mitigating factor she had to consider is that Van Wissen was the victim of an assault in the workplace - in the incident that gave rise to his original complaint - and the military has acknowledged that occurred.
While his attempts to subvert the criminal justice process are aggravating, she said, the fact that he’d never been in trouble throughout his life until just recently suggests these events are out of character and were the result of increasing pressure professionally and personally.
“He presented as a somewhat atypical first-time offender,” the judge said.
Van Wissen presents as an offender with “excellent potential for rehabilitation,” LeBlanc said, and he’s clearly expressed remorse for his actions.
Consequently, she granted him a six-month conditional sentence.
During that time, he’s to observe a curfew of 10 p.m.-6 a.m. every day, present himself at the door of his home for compliance checks during those hours, have no contact with Normore, abstain from alcohol and other intoxicants, and participate in any evaluation or course of treatment as directed by his sentence supervisor.
That will be followed by one year of probation, during which the treatment and no-contact provisions will continue.
The judge also imposed a mandatory order requiring Van Wissen to submit a DNA sample for inclusion in a criminal database and ordered him to pay $200 in victim-fine surcharges.
Don MacPherson can be contacted at ftonindependent@gmail.com.