[2][3] Jamie Tanis Gladue was a young Cree woman charged with second-degree murder after stabbing her common-law husband during an altercation.
[4] On the evening of her nineteenth birthday celebration, Ms. Gladue confronted the victim, Reuben Beaver, about the affair she believed he was having with her sister.
The trial judge noted that both Gladue and the victim were not living in an Aboriginal community at the time of the incident and therefore had no special circumstances arising from their Métis status.
[5] While Gladue was a Métis woman, she was living in an urban area at the time which affected the decision of the trial judge in applying section 718.2(e).
[7] In 1996, the Canadian Parliament introduced an amendment to the Criminal Code of Canada, section 718.2(e), in Bill C-41, to help reduce the rate of Indigenous people entering the justice system.
In March 2012, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Gladue Principle also applies to breaches of long-term supervision orders.
While this can vary depending on the province, territory, or court system, the Canadian Bar Association (CBA) outlines a general overview of questions.
[14] The amendment specifically aimed to address Indigenous over-representation and stated that in order to determine an appropriate sentence, the judge must consider the background of the accused as these can often be mitigating factors.
[6] The Court found that the rate of incarceration for Indigenous offenders was extremely high, and hoped that these amendments would provide some alternatives to imprisonment.
Section 718.2(e) and Gladue principles aim to combat the increasing number of Indigenous people entering the justice system in Canada.
[18] Welsh and Ogloff's 2008 study recognized the lack of decreasing Indigenous incarceration rates when examining 691 randomly sampled sentencing decisions before and after s 718.2(e) was introduced.
[14] They noted that the Supreme Court of Canada's decision regarding s.718.2(e) as a band-aid solution was an "underestimate of the true complexity of the over-representation problem".
[14] Welsh and Ogloff's research backed up many criticisms that Gladue needed to be fixed according to the original promises made by the Supreme Court.
[22] Additionally, 2023 research by Rhea Murti found that most provincial appeal court judges chose not to apply Gladue when sentencing.