The country's top court has rejected Joshua Gauthier's request to review his conviction for assaulting a fellow soccer player in the summer of 2019.
In a decision released on Dec. 12, the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the Sault Ste. Marie man's application for permission to appeal the decision.
His lawyer Don Orazietti filed the application in July – almost five years to the day the incident occurred. Gauthier was seeking leave to appeal a May 7, 2024 Ontario Court of Appeal judgment.
The Supreme Court customarily doesn't give a reason for its dismissal of an application.
A Sault judge found the well-known local athlete guilty of aggravated assault on Adam Erickson on Nov. 25, 2022, following a four-day trial.
Gauthier struck his opponent during a highly competitive July 8, 2019 recreational league match at Strathclair Park. The blow fractured the victim's right orbital bone, resulting in a laceration above his eye that required 18 stitches.
Superior Court Justice Edward Gareau sentenced the then 39-year-old Algoma Steel employee, who had no prior criminal record, to 12 months house arrest, followed by one-year probation.
In May of last year, Gauthier failed in his bid to have the Ontario Court of Appeal overturn the conviction.
The province's top court also upheld the penalty imposed by Gareau, rejecting he appellant's request to reduce the conditional sentence to 12 months probation.
In response to the Supreme Court's dismissal, Orazietti said the court grants about one in 10 applications to actually proceed to a hearing.
"I knew the odds were slim and there is nothing novel about this case to permit it to qualify as a case of national significance," the veteran lawyer said in an e-mail.
His argument would have centred on the issue of self-defence. There are those who say there is not an act of self-defence when the results are unpleasant, Orazietti said.
In this case, the lower courts didn't like the result of this action because it caused more than a bruise or a bloody nose, he suggested.
"The fact there may have been alternatives available for Gauthier does not mean he can not act in self-defence," Orazietti said. "My client had no duty to retreat or surrender the ball as the trial judge suggested."
The result is irrelevant if the act of self-defence (a punch) was reasonable.
"What this case stands for is that you are entitled to use reasonable force in an act of self-defence, but if the court doesn't like the resulting injury you can be convicted of aggravated assault."
Orazietti said when he took the case to Ontario's top court the appeal was over in 10 minutes. There wasn't a single question or comment from the three-judge panel.
"To me it was a disappointment and the lack of inquiry was stunning."
It is easy to sympathize with the victim but that isn't how the act of self-defence is determined, he said.
"In the end my client was convicted of a very serious offence for which I maintain, and the law supports, that he was wrongly convicted," Orazietti said.
"The system failed him. You don't need a murder to have a wrongful conviction."