By Tina Comeau
THE VANGUARD
NovaNewsNow.com
Clayton Jacquard’s former parole officer testified in court on Tuesday that he feels the Yarmouth man does not have remorse for the death of his stepfather Sandy Hurlburt, the man he shot a week before Christmas in 1992.
“You don’t feel that Mr. Jacquard has remorse for Mr. Hurlburt’s death?” Crown attorney Mark Heerema asked Ian Carr, who was Jacquard’s parole officer from 2006 to 2008.
“That’s correct,” said Carr, telling the jury in Jacquard’s faint hope hearing that Jacquard is not sorry for the death of his stepfather – a man who the court has been told physically and verbally abused Jacquard when he was growing up. Rather he feels sorry for the hardship he’s caused his family and himself.
Asked if Jacquard feels remorse for shooting Barbara Wilkinson on that same night, Carr said there is a sense of remorse but not to the point where Jacquard would cry about it or is saying he’s sorry. Jacquard is not an emotional person, Carr said, “You’re not going to see tears fall.”
The witness testified that Jacquard has also, in the past, questioned why Wilkinson would still fear him and he doesn’t understand why she would send letters to the National Parole Board or Corrections Canada saying such.
And Carr and other witnesses testified that it still isn’t clear to Jacquard why he shot Wilkinson in a Parade Street apartment on Dec. 17, 1992. He doesn’t know why he shot her. Wilkinson has been present in court for all of the testimony.
Jacquard, convicted of murder in 1994, is serving a life sentence for those shootings and is not eligible for parole for 25 years. He’s applied to the court to allow him to go to the parole board before that 25-year mark to ask for early parole. Whether he should be allowed to do that is something a juror must decide.
For the most part, the testimony given in Supreme Court in Yarmouth on June 1, the second day of his hearing, portrayed Jacquard in a positive light. The court was told about how, for years, he has been successfully completing escorted temporary absences (ETAs) from prison to do work at a halfway house in Moncton, N.B. or to work at a local food bank. At one point he was allowed three ETAs a month. People at the halfway house and the food bank, the court was told, were happy to have Jacquard at their premises.
There was one time, however, when Jacquard returned to prison from an ETA with an extra $10 in his pocket and a DVD. Ten dollars and a DVD may not seem like much, but for an ETA it was considered a big violation because it was against the rules.
Jacquard began serving his prison time in maximum security but over a year into his sentence was moved to medium security at Dorchester for around 11 years and then transferred to minimum security at Westmorland. At the minimum-security prison inmates share living quarters in townhouses, as opposed to being confined to a prison cell, and armed or fortified walls and fences do not protect the perimeter of the institution.
Susan MacDonald, who was Jacquard’s parole officer off and on from 1996 to 2005, said she was supportive of Jacquard’s move to minimum security. She described Jacquard as a good worker in the institution, who would willing participate in anything asked of him. While he freely accepted responsibility for the 1992 shootings, though, MacDonald said she had trouble finding remorse.
