A Mackenzie man who hit an RCMP officer in the head with a thrown hammer has failed to convince the B.C. Court of Appeal to overturn a conviction for the incident.
Joseph Edward Zaworski, 42, is currently serving a three-year jail term for a chain of events in December 2018 that began when he refused to pull over for police while driving a stolen pickup truck.
He instead ended up inside his mother's home in McLeod Lake where a standoff with two RCMP officers ensued. While his mother, Cynthia Openshaw, tried to keep the officers out of the house, Zaworski made his way to the back.
When commanded by police to give himself up, Zaworski instead threw the hammer and hit one of the officers square in the forehead, causing him enough pain to make him feel on the verge of passing out. If not for the folded up toque he was wearing, the outcome could have been much worse, the sentencing judge, Cassandra Malfair, noted in a , but he regained his senses.
The officers found Zaworski hiding behind a couch and he was apprehended but only after police produced a taser.
Zaworski pleaded guilty to assaulting a peace officer, for which he was sentenced to a year in jail, and to dangerous driving and fleeing police, for which he was sentenced to a further term of two years, adding up to three in total.
In the appeal, Zaworski's counsel questioned the legal validity of the assault count. In particular, after pleading guilty, Zaworski told the author of a pre-sentence report and a psychiatrist that he did not intend to hit the officer but meant to hit a light hanging from the ceiling.
The issue was subsequently raised at sentencing and, in response, a special hearing was held to determine Zaworski's true intention. It ended with Malfair concluding he, indeed, intended to hit the officer and that his story defied the laws of physics and common sense.
Zaworski's counsel in the appeal argued the special hearing was not a proper trial. But in a , the Court of Appeal found the hearing "was no different in substance."
In sentencing Zaworski, Malfair acceded to a joint submission from Crown and defence counsels. The Court of Appeal found Zaworski received an "substantial benefit" in exchange for his guilty plea and noted the judge's comment that the Crown's position on sentencing was "generous."
The Court of Appeal also noted Zaworski's "significant experience with the justice system and its processes" from past run-ins with the law, that included a previous conviction for assault causing bodily harm.
As such, the Court of Appeal found the Zaworski failed to establish a miscarriage of justice.
In October 2021, Openshaw was sentenced to a 120-day conditional sentence order and two years probation for her effort to prevent police from arresting her son.
