Bradley Barton's defence argues for sentence as short as 5 years for 2011 Edmonton hotel killing

Edmonton -

An Ontario truck driver should serve between five and nine years in prison for killing a woman in his Edmonton hotel room, his lawyer argued Tuesday.

The sentencing hearing for Bradley Barton, 53, continued Tuesday into the second of three scheduled days. On Monday, the Crown argued for a sentence of between 18 and 20 years.

In February, Barton was found guilty of manslaughter in the 2011 death of Cindy Gladue, a 36-year-old Métis and Cree woman.

Her body was found in a bathtub in Barton's hotel room at the Yellowhead Inn in June 2011. Court heard she bled to death after a wound to her vagina.

Barton's lawyer, Dino Bottos, appealed to Albert Court of Queen's Bench Justice Stephen Hillier to reject the Crown's suggested sentence as "vengeful."

"Mr. Barton will deserve a time in a penitentiary," Bottos said. "But we have to guard against a sentence of unbridled punishment, unbridled vengeance." 

He warned against punishing Barton for "all the systemic inequities and indignities visited upon Indigenous females."

"He will have pay for his own sins," Bottos said. 

"But I suggest he can't be made to pay for the sins of our fathers."

Bottos cited what he termed to be Barton's "excellent" prospects of rehabilitation as well as his lack of a prior criminal record and conduct in the decade since the killing.

"As grave as Mr. Barton’s offence was, he is not somebody who has to be incarcerated for the protection of society."

Justice Hillier indicated he could deliver his oral reasons for sentencing as soon as Wednesday.

'I FEEL BROKEN'

On Monday, court heard victim impact statements, written by members of Gladue's family and read out by a family friend.

"I feel broken when I see my great grandchildren with their mothers, without my daughter and without their grandmother," read a statement from Donna McLeod, Gladue's mother. 

"I have spent every day for the last 10 years reliving the violent death of my daughter."

"You tore her body apart from the inside. A pain no woman should have to endure," read a statement from Prairie Adaoui, one of Gladue's cousins. 

"Our world is a much less kind and beautiful place without her." ​

In seeking a sentence of up to two decades, crown prosecutors argued Gladue was vulnerable and died of "sexual brutality," noting the nature of her injuries.

"It was death by genital mutilation." At trial, Crown prosecutors argued Barton caused the fatal wound when he sexually assaulted Gladue. Bottos argued Barton and Gladue had engaged in consensual sex acts.

Barton, a truck driver from Mississauga, Ont., has been tried twice in connection with Gladue's death. A jury found him not guilty in 2015 of first-degree murder.

The acquittal prompted demonstrations for justice for Indigenous women across the country.

Both the Alberta Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada ordered a new trial.