Judges dismiss appeal from Michael Gordon Jackson in Sask. vaccine abduction case

The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal has unanimously dismissed an appeal by Michael Gordon Jackson, a Regina man convicted of abducting his then-seven-year-old daughter in an effort to prevent her from being vaccinated against COVID-19.

According to the decision, which was published on Thursday, Jackson appealed his 2022 conviction and the sentence he received of a year in custody – time he had already served prior to his conviction – plus two years of probation. He argued that the jury at his trial was not properly instructed on the defence of necessity and said the sentencing judge failed to properly account for his “pure” motivation.

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After some negotiation efforts by the RCMP, and the girl’s mother – her primary caregiver – providing Jackson with a sworn affidavit saying she would not have the child vaccinated, Jackson was ultimately found and arrested on a Canada-wide warrant in Vernon, B.C. in February of 2022. The girl was reunited with her mother after three months apart and was returned to Saskatchewan.

While Jackson claimed the jury at his trial should have been instructed about the defence of necessity, though the Crown raised objections. Ultimately, the trial judge did not instruct the jury on necessity, finding “no air of reality” to the claim that he acted out of necessity when he abducted the child. The judge noted that the girl’s mother had not yet made a decision around vaccination, and said the affidavit she provided put an end to “any purported urgency and imminence of harm.”

The appeal court agreed with the judge, noting that Jackson had legal resources open to him before abducting the girl, which he did not pursue due to his distrust of the justice system.

“Mr. Jackson made his choice based on a belief that a person in his situation could not reasonably hold,” the appeal decision read.

“A jury could not reasonably conclude that illegally abducting and concealing the child from the child’s other parent was a reasonable option in the face of a viable legal alternative in the form of a court application. As a result, there was no evidence upon which a properly instructed jury acting reasonably could have acquitted Mr. Jackson based on the s. 285 defence.”

The appeal decision further noted that deciding the issue based on the availability of a proper, legal recourse does not mean the court acknowledges that the girl was at risk of imminent harm due to the potential for being vaccinated.

On the sentencing issue, Jackson argued that the judge erred by failing to account for time he had already served for contempt of court “and by failing to take his well-intentioned motives into account.”

The appeal court, which upheld the sentence, noted that Jackson did not mention the 60-day sentence for contempt of court during his sentencing submissions in the abduction case, the fact the contempt conviction was not considered an aggravating factor during sentencing, the fact further incarceration was not ordered due to time already served, and the fact the judge noted that the primary purpose of the sentence was rehabilitative.

Jackson’s claim that the sentencing judge failed to consider his “pure motivations in taking his daughter” was also rejected by the appeal judges.

The appeal court noted that the Court of King’s Bench judge accepted Jackson’s position that he abducted the girl primarily to prevent her from being vaccinated, and he believed he was protecting her from harm by doing so.

While the sentencing decision did not take Jackson’s motives into account as a mitigating factor, the appeal judges agreed that does not constitute evidence of an error.

“… it was the view of the trial judge that Mr. Jackson’s motivation did not reduce the moral blameworthiness of his conduct,” the decision read. “That was a finding she was entitled to make.”