An American fugitive with a criminal record that dates back more than a decade to when he killed his mother with a baseball bat is facing two hearings next year at which he could be declared a dangerous offender.
Mr. Justice Michael MacDonald of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court agreed yesterday to hear the Crown prosecutors' arguments that William Shrubsall, 29, of Niagara Falls, N.Y., be declared a dangerous offender.
Mr. Shrubsall was convicted last month of aggravated sexual assault, unlawful confinement and trying to choke a young woman at a university fraternity house two years ago.
That hearing is scheduled for September, but it may not be needed. Crown prosecutors are now preparing for a Feb. 5 hearing at which they want Mr. Shrubsall declared a dangerous offender after he was convicted last year of assaulting a clerk with a baseball bat and sexually assaulting a woman in separate incidents in 1998.
If the court declares Mr. Shrubsall a dangerous offender, he will serve an indefinite prison term.
Crown prosecutor Paul Carver told reporters outside the court that he is keeping all sentencing options open.
"The circumstances of this case were extremely serious," he said.
In his most recent trial, a young woman, who cannot be identified by court order, testified that Mr. Shrubsall became violent when she refused to let him kiss her, ripped her pants and choked her, causing her to lose consciousness twice.
During the trial, Mr. Shrubsall testified that he assaulted the woman but he denied sexually attacking her. In a note that he wrote to a former girlfriend in 1998, Mr. Shrubsall said that he had a brain tumour that made him do what he called "awful things." In one of the earlier cases, a store clerk suffered serious facial injuries after Mr. Shrubsall hit her a dozen times in the face with a baseball bat.
Mr. Shrubsall first gained notoriety in 1988 when he beat his mother to death the night before he was to give the valedictory address at his Niagara Falls high school.
As a youth offender, he served 16 months in reform school. In 1996, he left a bogus suicide note telling his aunt that he had thrown himself over Niagara Falls. Instead, he fled to Canada as a jury was about to convict him for sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl.
U.S. justice officials say they are anxious to extradite him to serve seven to 10 years on the sexual-assault charge. He will also face jail time in the United States for jumping bail.
He managed to live in Halifax without attracting attention for nearly two years using several aliases, including one that identified him as 19-year-old Ian Thor Green. When he was arrested in the summer of 1998, he was living at a fraternity house at Dalhousie University and told the people living there he was a first-year medical student.
Yesterday, Judge MacDonald remanded Mr. Shrubsall to the Halifax Correctional Centre and ordered that he undergo a psychiatric assessment.