Skip to content

Crown asks for 15 years for manslaughter, 10 for robbery in Levi Cayen trial

The Crown prosecution in the trial of Levi Cayen is asking for a 10-year sentence for robbery, and a 15-year sentence for the killing of Alexander Norwegian.
29597269_web1_220629-YEL-CayenSentencingPartTwo-Courthouse_1
Sentencing for Levi Cayen resumed this week after being delayed for a month. NNSL file photo

The Crown prosecution in the trial of Levi Cayen is asking for a 10-year sentence for robbery, and a 15-year sentence for the killing of Alexander Norwegian.

Crown prosecutor Duane Praught asked Justice Shannon Smallwood to hand down the sentence during the second day of sentencing on Tuesday. It was not immediately clear if the Crown was asking for the sentences to be served consecutively or simultaneously.

In arguing for the sentence, Praught said Cayen was guilty of “the highest level of culpability,” for manslaughter, since, he argued, Cayen knew his actions could result in Norwegian’s death.

He pointed out that Cayen and his co-conspirators had brought weapons with them.

“Violence was not only contemplated, but anticipated, if not expected,” he said.

Cayen is the last of four offenders to be sentenced for the beating, robbery and killing of 25 year-old Norwegian. The victim succumbed to hypothermia after being abandoned by his attackers.

Also on Tuesday, Smallwood ruled that records showing Cayen had been found guilty of certain infractions while in custody were admissible as evidence. The Crown is asking Cayen not be given credit for time already served due to these infractions.

Hearings are expected to continue Wednesday afternoon.

“I don’t believe that justice was served”

The Crown, on Tuesday, entered into the record more than one dozen impact statements written by those who were close to Norwegian, who was found dead in his car on the Katl’odeeche First Nation in December 2017. Praught read many of those statements aloud.

Norwegian’s mother, Wanda, read her own statement to the court.

“There are many sleepless nights,” she said. “Tragic deaths and murders in the news trigger me, and I think about those families and how painful it is.

“The death of my son is causing the utmost pain and suffering that I deal with every moment of every day — something I will never forgive them for, forever.”

Both the victim’s grandmother, Elsie Bouvier, and aunt, Barbi Bouvier, argued in their statements that justice had not been served when the verdicts were delivered to the perpetrators. The jury found Cayen guilty of manslaughter rather than the original charge of first-degree murder in March.

“I don’t believe that justice was served,” said Barbi Bouvier.

Elsie Bouvier, had some words for her grandson’s killers: “My wish is that all that were involved in Alexander’s death live to an old age, and always remember what they did in December 2017.”