Brodie Nicholls sentenced to 6 years for killing Jesse Clarke

Brodie Nicholls has been sentenced to six years in jail for killing 14-year-old Jesse Clarke.

Justice Catrina Braid delivered her judgment in a Hamilton court Friday morning. With credit for time served, Nicholls is facing four years and four months in a federal penitentiary.

Members of Clarke's family stormed out of the courtroom Friday after the decision was read, angered by the length of the sentence and clearly distraught.

"That's some f---ing message to the public," Clarke's father Blair yelled as he left the room.

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Soon after court ended, Clarke's stepmother Katherine Lutz posted on Facebook that there has been "no justice for Jesse."

"Very sad day for Hamilton to let an adult killer off with four years for killing a child that was retreating, not armed and alone," she wrote. "Karma will have to take care of this for as usual, the Hamilton justice system failed."

On the steps of the courthouse, assistant Crown Attorney Jill McKenzie told reporters that the family is still grieving for Clarke, who was stabbed in the heart on an east end street back in 2014.

"They've lost their 14-year-old son," McKenzie said. "I can't imagine anything more devastating."

Nicholls, who is now 19, was originally charged with second-degree murder for Clarke's death, but plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter in June.

The young teen's death marked the first time that Hamilton's youth gangs were thrust into the spotlight, and police have since started investigating multiple incidents of violence in the city. The mayor has even launched a task force in an attempt to curb the problem.

A stupid and senseless loss

In victim impact statements submitted for the case, Clarke's friends wrote how they now carry weapons when they leave the house out of fear for their safety something Braid condemned as incidents of violence in Hamilton keep happening with "disturbing frequency," she said.

"These young men must put down their knives and put down their weapons, or this situation will repeat itself," she said.

"This was a stupid and senseless loss of a young life."

Clarke was in a group of about 10 young people who confronted Nicholls outside his east Hamilton home in August of 2014. According to an agreed statement of facts, many of those gathered described themselves as loosely affiliated with the BNA/LOM youth gangs.

It's unclear why they had assembled there. Clarke's family has long maintained he was not part of any gang.

Things escalated after Nicholls grabbed a knife from the home and started swinging it at the group, which Braid attributed to "misguided loyalty" to a woman who was acting as his foster mother. After Nicholls was hit in the neck with a pole, the confrontation moved down a side street. As people were dispersing, Clarke was stabbed in the heart.

The teen collapsed on the porch of a nearby home while drifting in and out of consciousness. He later died in hospital.

"After I was hit, I snapped," Nicholls said in court Thursday. Defence lawyer Beth Bromberg called the incident a "spontaneous act in response to something very frightening that was happening that [Nicholls] couldn't handle."

A tragic upbringing

Much of the three days of sentencing revolved around Nicholls' upbringing, which had been labelled "tragic" and "horrific" by both the Crown and the defence. He was a victim of physical, sexual and emotional abuse as a young child, court heard, and dealt with "ongoing exposure to drug use and prostitution" because of his birth mother, Braid said.

Nicholls' mother sat in the courtroom, shaking her head as the judge described how her actions may well have directly attributed to her son ending up in jail. She has been in and out of his life, Braid said, and only "recently reappeared" after Clarke's death.

Nicholls' mother would not speak with reporters after the verdict was handed down. His sister who is estranged from her mother also declined to speak, saying she needed time to collect her thoughts. She wept openly in court several times over the course of the sentencing hearing, as the circumstances of Nicholls' upbringing were examined.

In her decision, Braid said she also had to consider Nicholls' disabilities and his aboriginal ancestry when deciding his sentence. Nicholls has been assessed as having "lower cognitive functioning" as well as borderline fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Since the incident he has been exhibiting signs of auditory schizophrenia, which are being treated in jail.

Nicholls' grandmother was aboriginal, court heard, and was adopted at a young age into a white family. Her detachment from her ancestry, alongside substance abuse issues, wreaked havoc on her family through the years, court heard.

Aboriginal people only make up for two per cent of Ontario's population, yet 22 per cent of the province's Crown wards are aboriginal, Braid said. Nicholls was in and out of foster care since he was 10 years old. "That history has had a profound effect on Mr. Nicholls," Braid said.

Outside the courthouse, McKenzie said that she hopes that now, Clarke's family can start to heal but in her decision, Braid said she knew that won't come easy.

"The friends, family and community of Jesse Clarke are suffering," she said.

"The community weeps for their loss."

adam.carter@cbc.ca