A 30-year-old former Queen’s University student has discovered the hard way that going for the last word can bite.

James W. Howe was convicted late last year, following trial, on charges of criminally harassing David Patterson, the university’s risk and safety services manager of special projects, plus a corresponding violation of probation imposed on him in February 2019, just days before he got himself back into hot water.

His sentencing was put over to obtain additional information about him — and a victim impact statement from Patterson. After everything was in, however, the lawyers could hardly have been farther apart. Assistant Crown attorney Ryan Makasare urged Justice Larry O’Brien to sentence Howe to six months in jail, minus his pretrial custody. Howe’s lawyer, Brian Callender, argued for a suspended sentence

But in the end, the judge took Howe’s diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (Asperger syndrome) into account and gave him a 90-day conditional sentence to serve in his home community of Ottawa, plus 18 months of probation.

Howe initially got into trouble in April 2018 when he threatened his female counsellor with rape and rattled her sense of security by revealing that he knew about her children, information that she hadn’t shared with him.

As a consequence of his behaviour towards the woman, Howe was arrested and ended up spending 279 days in pretrial custody before being convicted in early February 2019 on a charge of criminally harassing her. He was then sentenced to a further 15 days in jail and placed on probation for three years, the maximum supervision term available.

Howe texted his way back to the wrong side of the law, however, on Feb. 13, 2019, the very day his father, Douglas Howe, picked him up from Quinte Detention Centre and drove him back to Ottawa.

The older Howe testified at his son’s trial that on the drive home, his son had talked about putting his life back together but recalled that he was also angry about delays in getting his case to trial, which had kept him in jail and in fear for his life for nine months without bail.

After they arrived in Ottawa, Howe senior said his son did his “running around” and they had dinner together, and then James Howe started going through his emails, which included a May 8, 2018, letter from the Queen’s University provost, informing him that there was a “no trespass” order barring him from the university campus. It also indicated that copies of the trespass letter had been forwarded to six other campus staff, including Patterson, who was at that time director of campus security and emergency services.

Douglas Howe said his son had known about the provost’s trespass letter since it arrived, but he’d never actually seen it before that night. He was in his home office playing on his electric drum kit, he told Justice O’Brien, when his son came in and told him about the reply email he’d just sent to the provost and the people copied at the bottom of his letter. “He said something like, ‘Heh-heh-heh: I couldn’t resist,” and Howe senior said he had the impression his son was pleased with himself, “like he’d got something off his chest.”

His own reaction was quite different, he testified. “I was kind of angry with him because Queen’s is not his friend and his (probation) conditions had something about good behaviour and I didn’t know what that meant.”

The reply Howe sent included an enigmatic meme from Star Wars: “If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”

Patterson testified that he immediately recognized the line as Obi Wan Kenobi’s last words to Darth Vader before Vader killed him, and he found that alarming in itself. But he also found it disturbing to receive any message from Howe so soon after his release.

Patterson told Justice O’Brien it suggested a level of focus and fixation that his 30 years in security identified as a threat, and he testified that it caused him to fear for his young family.

syangisawa@postmedia.com