P.E.I. appeal court upholds Joel Clow's sentence in death of Traci Lynn Lynch
Prince Edward Island's Court of Appeal has dismissed Joel Clow's appeal of the 12-year sentence he is serving for manslaughter in the death of Traci Lynn Lynch.
Clow, now 55, pleaded guilty to that charge in 2019 after an earlier appeal resulted in a new trial.
Lynch had been Clow's girlfriend before she was found dead on his Pleasant Grove property in 2015. An autopsy said she died of strangulation and blunt force injury.
Clow had originally been convicted of second-degree murder in her death, but his lawyers argued that he was too intoxicated to know what he was doing when he killed her.
After he was sentenced to 12 years with no credit for time he had already served in custody, Clow appealed his sentence.
He argued that the judge should not have gone along with the joint recommendation on sentencing submitted by the defence and Crown, calling it "contrary to the public interest" and saying it was so "demonstrably unfit such that it brought the administration of justice into disrepute."
Traci Lynn Lynch, shown in an undated photo, lived in a house about a kilometre down the road from Joel Clow at the time of her death. (Submitted)
Clow specifically objected to not getting any credit for the almost four years he had spent behind bars before being sentenced.
In Friday's ruling, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeal dismissed his arguments.
"A sentencing judge may reject a joint submission on sentence only if the proposed sentence is so unhinged from the circumstances of the offence and the offender that its acceptance would lead reasonable and informed persons... to believe that the proper functioning of the justice system had broken down," the ruling said in part.
It said the sentencing judge properly dealt with the extensive precedents she had been given, and "the sentence imposed was not such as to bring the administration of justice into disrepute or be otherwise contrary to the public interest."
A file photo shows Joel Clow being led out of court in 2019. (CBC)
Evidence presented at Clow's trial suggested Lynch was afraid of Clow leading up to her death. Among other things, court heard he had tried to run her down with his truck, poured bleach over her clothes, and flooded her house.
The sentencing judge called Lynch's death "extremely violent and tragic," given that Clow had torn her T-shirt, wrapped it around her neck and using it to drag her from a neighbour's house to his property, where her body was later found hidden in a wheelbarrow.
"The appellant had a prior criminal record including convictions for domestic assault and uttering threats involving domestic partners," Friday's ruling noted.
