Courtroom happenings dominate 2013

2013 proved to be a news-making year in the Battlefords.

There were so many top stories in the Battlefords that we didn't have room for all of them in our Jan. 2 Regional Optimist edition. So here are more of the major stories that dominated headlines and interest in 2013.

As it turned out, the courthouses on both sides of the river were active places for news.

One trial was that of Ashley Marie Johnson. She was convicted of two counts of assault and one count of administering a noxious substance to Sylene Piatt, an intellectually disabled woman under her care at a care home in North Battleford.

The charges stemmed from incidents where Johnson was alleged to have placed peppercorns in Piatt's mouth and lemon juice on her face. The noxious substance charge came from allegations that Johnson had placed hand sanitizer on Piatt's eyes and face.

In June, Johnson was sentenced in Queen's Bench court in Battleford to four months conditional sentence order and a year's probation.

Another high-profile case finally resolved in 2013, was that of Red Pheasant First Nation chief Stewart Baptiste, who has been in and out of court on several charges over the previous couple of years.

An outstanding charge against Baptiste of operating a vehicle while impaired, as well as refusing to provide a breath sample and for failure to appear in court, made their way to provincial court in North Battleford in July for what was scheduled to be the start of a trial.

Instead, lawyers for the Crown and defence met, and returned to the courtroom later to announce they had worked out a plea deal. The impaired driving and the breath sample charges were dropped, and Baptiste entered a guilty plea to the lesser included offence of dangerous driving and to the failure to appear charge.

Baptiste was fined a total of $1,200 and received a three-month driving prohibition.

Another ongoing case that made its way slowly through the court system in 2013 was the sexual assault charge against radio personality Harry Michael Dekker that stemmed from an alleged incident near Borden in the fall of 2012.

There was not a lot of news to report on that case, however, as it went into mediation by the latter half of the year and a publication ban was imposed. The Dekker matters will be returning to court in Saskatoon this month.