Ontario Superior Court Justice Andrew Goodman has been publicly reprimanded and ordered to apologize to a man found guilty of manslaughter for imposing a prison sentence two years longer than intended at the end of the high-profile case.
Goodman waited over a year before admitting he’d meant to sentence Peter Khill to six years in prison for manslaughter, not eight.
Khill had been found guilty in the 2016 shooting death of Jonathan Styres, a 29-year-old Cayuga father of two from Six Nations of the Grand River.
The Canadian Judicial Council’s three-person review panel condemned Goodman’s “inaction,” calling it “a serious ethical lapse and a failure,” in a decision released Wednesday.
While Goodman apologized through the review process, the panel remained concerned he “still fails to fully appreciate how the delay in correcting his error affects public confidence in the judiciary.”
Goodman will keep his position in Superior Court, the review panel decided, as his conduct wasn’t “so profoundly destructive of the concept of impartiality, integrity and independence” to justify removing him.
Goodman handed down the wrong sentence in June 2023 after Khill’s three trials, multiple appeals and a Supreme Court of Canada ruling.
In August 2024, as Khill was in the process of appealing his sentence and conviction, Goodman sent a letter to the Court of Appeal about his mistake. He said he’d grabbed the wrong printed copy of his decision on the way to the courtroom and realized the error as he read it aloud.
He didn’t immediately correct himself, Goodman said, “perhaps due to a variety of factors, including having just read out a lengthy 53-page ruling before a crowded and divergent audience, with substantial media presence, for this high-profile case.”
Supreme Court won’t hear Khill’s appeal
After the hearing, Goodman consulted several “experienced, judicial colleagues” about rectifying his error, but was “dissuaded” from doing so because the eight-year prison term was still an acceptable sentence for manslaughter, Goodman said.
It wasn’t until Khill’s appeal was underway that Goodman felt compelled to come forward.
The review panel said his mistake of reading the wrong sentence was a human one and understandable. But his decision to not say anything for over a year was unreasonable.
While Khill’s sentence ended up being reduced to six years by the Court of Appeal, and he didn’t serve any extra time due to Goodman’s mistake, it still impacted him, the review panel said.
“Mr. Khill, for a significant time, remained under the belief that he was sentenced to a substantially lengthier sentence,” the decision said. “It may very well have been that if Justice Goodman’s error as to the length of sentence had been immediately corrected, there would not have been any appeal.”
While the Appeal Court had reduced Khill’s sentence, it did not overturn his conviction. Khill argued he fired a gun in self-defence after finding Styres breaking into his truck early into Feb. 4, 2016.
Khill attempted to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, but this week, the top court declined to hear the case, marking its end.
As is standard practice, the high court did not give reasons for its decision to disallow hearing the case.
