Disgraced former lawyer James Bowie sat expressionless in the prisoner’s box Tuesday as a judge imposed a four-year penitentiary sentence for extortion, criminal harassment and uttering threats related to a former client.
Bowie, 43, was found
guilty
in March of criminal harassment and extorting a friend by pressuring her to obtain a gun to “take care” of his former client, Leanne Aubin.
Ontario Court Justice Paul Cooper found
Bowie
not guilty of one additional count of extortion related to Aubin, but found him guilty of uttering threats to kill her.
Cooper characterized Bowie as a once-prominent Ottawa defence lawyer who had elevated his public profile by providing live updates on social media to the numerous criminal cases related to the 2022 convoy demonstration.
“Mr. Bowie’s fall from grace was at his own hands,” Cooper said in his Sept. 2 sentencing decision.
Aubin had testified during the trial that she was in one of the darkest moments of her life when she was facing an assault charge and sought Bowie’s professional guidance as her defence lawyer.
Bowie “weaponized” his position as a lawyer in a proposition for an exchange of legal services for sexual favours, Aubin testified.
“Mr. Bowie used his status, his experience and my desperation to try to turn me into something I never was: an object he could manipulate and abuse for his own gratification,” she said in a victim impact statement in a July 28 sentencing hearing.
Aubin complained about Bowie’s conduct to the Law Society of Ontario, which launched an investigation and suspended him from practising law. He became “unhinged,” the court heard, after the complaint was reported in the press.
He then asked his then-friend for help in acquiring a gun, tracked her with a GPS device and confronted her in a grocery store parking lot.
“Mr. Bowie is to be sentenced for his conduct, for his acts of extortion against a once-close friend,” Cooper said on Sept. 2. “He extorted her to attempt to obtain a gun to assist in his efforts to have Ms. Leanne Aubin killed or for (his friend) to find someone who would do that.”
Cooper said Bowie criminally harassed his former friend “not once, but twice… following her and tracking her with GPS devices in a concerted effort to deliver a message to (her) that his actions and desires are real.
“He attempted to squeeze tighter the hold that he believed he had upon her,” Cooper said.
He was also sentenced for “his real and credible threat to kill Leanne Aubin,” the judge said.
Cooper suggested the criminal activity could have escalated even further.
“This could have been a homicide but for the courage of each of the two incredible individuals who were sadly victimized here by Mr. Bowie,” Cooper said.
The name of Bowie’s former friend is shielded by a court-ordered publication ban. A similar order shielded Aubin’s identity before she requested to have the publication ban lifted earlier in the proceedings.
