Doucette had served jail time
Posted Feb 28, 2012 10:07 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
While a community mourns the death of Andrea Conroy, 660News has learned her accused killer had a lengthy criminal record.
The Airdrie woman was found murdered in her home on Friday.
The body of her boyfriend, Rick Doucette, was found the next day in a Nanton motel room.
660News has learned, Doucette at one point served time in prison on several charges, including the attempted murder of a former girlfriend.
His former wife alleges Doucette moved to Alberta because one more violent charge would have resulted in a dangerous offender status
Legal expert Irvin Waller says it’s highly unlikely Doucette could have ever evaded a status from Ontario.
The author of ‘Less Law, More Order’ tells 660News a convict’s record is held nationally and would have been attached to his fingerprint record.
Waller says, had Doucette been arrested in Alberta, his long list of interactions with police would have followed.
“I don’t know whether there were any other signs that this guy was likely to be violent again and then you’re looking at, were police aware?” says Waller.
Given Doucette’s history, Waller speculates one arrest in Alberta might have been enough to earn him a new dangerous offender moniker.
A spokesperson for the federal justice minister’s office issued a general statement on the issue when asked for comment:
“Canadians gave us a strong mandate to crack down on dangerous and violent crimes and we are delivering. The Safe Streets and Communities Act, which is currently before Parliament, provides new tools to the Parole Board to keep dangerous offenders from roaming our streets. Already, we’ve acted by introducing and passing the Tackling Violent Crime Act which ensures that individuals convicted of three or more serious, violent crimes are presumed to meet the criteria for a dangerous offender designation. As such, they must convince a judge that they should not be held indefinitely as a dangerous offender.”
