Last week a jury found fake cop Aaron Wilson guilty of 2 counts of false pretense of a public officer. As you saw on 7News, Wilson emphatically rejected the jury's decision; he said they got it wrong - since he never impersonated a police officer, he was acting as a special constable. But, he had to tell that to the judge at sentencing today. Instead, though, his attorney Christelle Wilson took a different tack. She explained to us today that he could have been facing prison time - so she had to ask the judge to consider the 7 hard years he waited for trial:..
Christelle Wilson, Attorney for Aaron Wilson
"The sentence was that he could have been sent to prison for 2 years, but the judge after hearing the arguments and also being made aware or reminded that the court has an inherent power, a discretionary power whereby they can impose a fine as opposed to a custodial sentence where the court sees it fit to do so and what we argued today was that there was a very long delay, from 2010 to 2017 when this matter came before the court and Mr. Wilson has suffered throughout those 7 years and the judge said nobody endured any loss as a result of what he was charged and convicted of. So taking in mind all of that, the judge decided to impose a fine on Mr. Wilson. He was fined $2,000 per count, so $4,000 in all and the judge discounted him $250 per count, because as I mentioned just now he took into consideration the delay that it took for the matter to reach the court. We are all very grateful for the judge's decision, because as you rightly said he could have been spending the night in jail, but instead he is going to go home with his family."
But, is it over for Wilson? When he spoke to us last week he sounded like he wanted to appeal the judgement. But, his attorney says he should consider his options very carefully:
Daniel Ortiz, 7News
"Is there any possibility that he would consider appealing the outcome? Because this goes down ion his personal record as a conviction for offences, for crimes."
Christelle Wilson, Attorney for Aaron Wilson
"That is a decision that only Mr. Wilson can make and we would have to sit down and go over the case to see if there was any misdirection or anything that would allude to an appeal."
"My advice to my client is, you have to be sure there are grounds for appeal. As I am looking at the evidence, it's more that looking at what the jury said. The jury came to a determination based on the evidence that they heard, they came to a conclusion. So what we do as attorneys is we look at the directions that the judge gave, we look at the evidence that went before the jury and as I told the judge today and I stand by that - I can't find any fault in what the judge did, so in a case like this an appeal would be very difficult and I would encourage my client to be grateful with what the judge did for him today."
So Wilson has to pay $3,500 dollars in fines - $1750 immediately and the balance by June 9th. If he defaults on payment he will serve 9 months in prison for each count.
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