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| John L. Hill |
This was confirmed by the decision in R. v. Maslehati, 2024 BCCA 207. However, in 2022, Justin Donald Sewell was charged with four counts: sexual assault, administering a stupefying drug, and two counts of voyeurism. The victim was his sister-in-law, a 20-year-old we’ll call V.L. He later pleaded guilty to sexual assault and both voyeurism charges; the drug charge was stayed. Sewell received a combined sentence of two years less a day to be served under a conditional sentence order. This was achieved through concurrent sentences: two years less a day of imprisonment for the sexual assault, six months for one voyeurism charge, and three months for the other.
The Crown appealed a provincial court sentence imposed on April 4, 2025, as excessively lenient. The British Columbia Court of Appeal considered the sentence and rendered its decision on Oct. 14, 2025 (R. v. Sewell, 2025 BCCA 348).
Sewell was married to V.L.’s older sister. He first met V.L. as a child and developed a brotherly relationship with her. In 2007, when V.L. was 20 and living with Sewell and his wife, he offered to let her drink alcohol for the first time. He secretly drugged her with ketamine or Valium,
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V.L. had only vague memories of the event but sensed something terrible had occurred. Sewell kept the photographs for years, viewing them occasionally before destroying them. The assault caused a deep rift in V.L.’s family when her sister discovered the photos in 2014. Although Sewell sent emails to V.L. over the years, he never admitted guilt.
In 2019, Sewell emailed V.L., saying he would support her decision to disclose what happened. Shortly after, another woman he had been involved with told V.L.’s sister that he had admitted to drugging V.L. and taking sexual photographs. V.L. then reported the assault to the RCMP.
In 2021, police arranged for V.L. to act as an undercover agent to obtain a confession. During a recorded meeting at a Vancouver restaurant, Sewell voluntarily confessed to drugging and sexually assaulting the woman, and to taking additional voyeuristic photos of her through her bedroom window.
The Court of Appeal considered Sewell’s circumstances. At sentencing, Sewell was in his late 40s, had no prior criminal record and was a well-established veterinarian in Fort St. John, B.C., running a clinic that employed 15 people. He was the only full-time vet there, and his incarceration would likely force the clinic to close, leaving the community without veterinary care.
He was active in his church and continued to be accepted despite his offences, as he volunteered and donated to charity. Sewell attributed his crimes and marital problems to a long-term pornography addiction, which he claimed to have addressed after nearly losing his marriage in 2014.
He presented strong community support, including 88 letters attesting to his good character and personal reform. A psychiatric report concluded that his risk of reoffending was low and detailed his rehabilitation efforts — such as completing a sexual purity program to abstain from pornography, attending a clinical workshop, working with an accountability partner, and using monitoring software on his devices managed by his wife.
The sentencing judge attributed the lenient sentence to Sewell’s significant cooperation and voluntary confession. The judge emphasized that without Sewell’s admissions, particularly regarding the voyeurism count V.L. had been unaware of, there would have been no case for police or prosecutors to pursue. Despite knowing his confession could lead to criminal charges, Sewell chose to disclose his actions, which the judge viewed as compelling mitigation and evidence of responsibility.
However, the Appeal Court identified an error in the sentencing process. When sentencing for multiple offences, judges must first determine an appropriate punishment for each offence, then decide whether sentences should run concurrently or consecutively, and finally apply the totality principle if necessary.
In this case, the sentencing judge correctly determined individual sentences but erred by omitting the step of analyzing whether the sentences should run consecutively or concurrently before applying the totality principle.
The law generally requires that offences involving separate legal interests, such as sexual assault (affecting bodily integrity) and voyeurism (affecting privacy), should receive consecutive sentences unless the judge provides an apparent reason otherwise. The sentencing judge failed to consider these distinct invasions of V.L.’s rights and the fact that one voyeurism offence arose from a separate incident.
Instead, the judge imposed concurrent sentences solely to avoid creating what he considered an excessively harsh cumulative term, reasoning that consecutive sentences would lessen the significance of the guilty plea. The Appeal Court found this to be a fundamental error, as it overlooked the distinct harms involved and improperly influenced the overall sentence.
The Appeal Court granted the Crown leave to appeal and allowed the appeal, replacing the respondent’s conditional sentence with a total custodial term of two years and nine months (33 months) less one day. The new sentence comprises: two years less a day for sexual assault (Count 1), six months for voyeurism during the assault (Count 3), to run consecutively to Count 1, and three months for voyeurism outside the bedroom (Count 4), to run consecutively to Counts 1 and 3.
The sentence is to take effect from April 4, 2025, with correctional authorities to determine credit for time served under the conditional sentence. All ancillary orders from the original sentencing remain unchanged.
John L. Hill practised and taught prison law until his retirement. He holds a JD from Queen’s and an LLM in constitutional law from Osgoode Hall. His most recent book, Acts of Darkness (Durvile & UpRoute Books), was released July 1. Hill is also the author of Pine Box Parole: Terry Fitzsimmons and the Quest to End Solitary Confinement (Durvile & UpRoute Books) and The Rest of the (True Crime) Story (AOS Publishing). Contact him at johnlornehill@hotmail.com.
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