ST. THOMAS, Ont. -- Just when he was supposed to be sentenced for a violent jewelry store heist, Wallace Piercey surprised everyone with a branch on his family tree.

Piercey's mother, Ontario Court Justice Michael O'Dea was told, is Cherokee -- a family factoid he hadn't told his defence lawyer, the Crown or the probation officer who wrote his pre-sentence report.

Oh.

That little detail was enough to require a so-called Gladue report, a specialized pre-sentence report for indigenous people.

And waiting for the report could delay his sentencing for months. The judge couldn't hide his skepticism about why Piercey had exercised his Gladue rights, suggesting the longer the sentencing takes, the less time Piercey will have left to serve since time spent in custody before sentencing counts heavier than afterward.

"I have to be quite blunt," O'Dea said. "Having regard to the pre-sentence report that I read, I find it just incredible that the system can go this long without the accused identifiying his mother's status."

"My suspicion is he's hoping that by the time he gets to sentencing, his pre-trial custody will cover it."

The judge questioned how such a detail could escape notice before.

"He's been assessed by a probation officer. He never mentioned it before. What is his connection to his native culture?" O'Dea asked.

"That's what the report will tell me," Prevost said.

Prevost told the judge he'd just found out about Piercey's maternal heritage during an interview in the St. Thomas courthouse cell block moments before he was supposed to start the sentencing hearing.

Piercey is facing a hefty sentence after pleading guilty in June to robbery, assault causing bodily harm and forcible confinement for the Feb. 1 robbery at B & L Jewelry in St. Thomas.

While the facts of the case still need to be presented in court, the police said at the time of the robbery that a store employee was punched in the face before the robber jumped the counter. He continued to assault her, then tied her arms and legs up with zip-ties and put duct tape over her mouth.

A customer, another woman, entered the store and was assaulted, then pushed into a back room. She escaped and called the police, but not before the robber had scooped up his loot and left.

Piercey was arrested in London the next day and has been in custody since.

The search for Piercey after the robbery led to a strange twist in London the next day when three St. Thomas police officers pulled over a cab and removed the passenger. They believed the man was Piercey, but they had the wrong person.

The incident led to an investigation by the province's Special Investigations Unit and charges against the officers.

While Piercey's mother claims an indigenous heritage, his father is Scottish. Piercey, 40, wasn't aware of the Gladue principles for First Nations offenders and had been visited at the Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre (EMDC) by a tribal elder, Prevost said.

The law, named after a Supreme Court of Canada case, is clear. Aboriginal offenders are entitled to a report that explores their connection to First Nations society and the systemic factors of discrimination and racism such as residential schools, physical or sexual abuse, displacement and addiction.

The law aims to address the over-representation of indigenous people in the criminal justice system and gives judges some discretion in sentencing.

Assistant Crown attorney Lisa Defoe said she was concerned that if the sentencing had gone ahead Wednesday, it would be easily appealed because his rights weren't recognized.

"The Crown is not in a position to oppose," she said.

While Piercey waits for his sentence, he's racking up "dead time" at the EMDC that will be credited to his sentence, at a rate of 1.5 days for every day he's been behind bars.

Prevost told O'Dea it would take six weeks to get a report finished and would likely have to be done by a Gladue writer based in London, where there's a designated court once a week for First Nations people. There's no Gladue writer in St. Thomas.

But that timeline might be optimistic. This week, St. Thomas defence lawyer Keli Mersereau, a vice-president with the Criminal Lawyers' Association, said wait times for Gladue reports in London are at least three months.

And it's necessary to allow the writers to collect all the information contained in what are usually 20-page-long investigations.

Should Piercey's report take that long, his extra three months in jail translates into four-and-a-half months off his sentence.

And, if his sentencing doesn't happen until February, a year after a robbery, he can expect a credit of 18 months off his sentence.

O'Dea said the last-minute adjournment was another example of how the justice system falls apart so quickly while the victims, who weren't in court, "want to get on with their life. "

He ordered the case return to St. Thomas on Oct. 18 to get an update on the timeline for the report.

"This is will be the last adjournment," he said.