Dangerous Offender Law

Vincent Larochelle, B.Sc., B.A. (Jurisprudence), is a lawyer practising in Yukon, British Columbia and Quebec. He has established himself as a leading attorney in the area of dangerous offender law, at both the trial and appellate levels. Larochelle successfully intervened in the matter of R. v. Boutilier and has been defence counsel in many precedent-setting cases, including R. v. Skookum, R. v. Lange, R. v. Charlie, R. v. Smarch, R. v. Meneely, R. v. Patel and R. v. J.J.P. He studied Mathematics and Classics at McGill University, graduating top of his class in the Faculty of Science in 2009. Larochelle then studied law on a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University, graduating with three distinctions and a prize in 2011. After earning his law degree, he practised as a tax attorney in New York City and eventually returned to Canada to clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada from 2014 to 2015. Larochelle then moved to the Yukon and became a criminal defence attorney specializing in appeals and dangerous offender law.

Alison Yule, B.F.A., M.Sc., J.D., is a Ph.D. candidate, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Doctoral Fellowship recipient and Law Foundation of British Columbia Graduate Fellowship recipient at the Peter A. Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia. She is supervised by prominent feminist legal scholars Professor Isabel Grant and Professor Debra Parkes. Her doctoral thesis is an exploratory case law study examining dangerous offender sentencing over a three-year period in Canada. Specifically, Yule’s dissertation involves a critical examination of how Part XXIV of the Criminal Code, a prospective sentencing regime based on future predictions of risk, may be at odds with the sentencing principles for Indigenous peoples mandated by the Supreme Court of Canada in Gladue/Ipeelee, as well as sentencing principles for cases involving sexual violence against children. In 2017, she was an academic visitor at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Criminology. Yule holds a Master of Social Science from Utrecht University specializing in organized crime and gang rehabilitation and an honours law degree from Bond University. She has worked as a teaching assistant and research assistant at the Peter A. Allard School of Law.

Gary Botting, Ph.D. (English), M.F.A. (Playwriting), J.D., LL.M., Ph.D. (Law), has acted as defence and appellate counsel in many high-profile extradition cases alleging major crimes as diverse as murder, robbery, sexual assault, abduction, extortion, racketeering, drug trafficking and fraud. His LL.M. and doctoral research at the University of British Columbia critiqued the Extradition Act, which came into force in 1999.

He received several doctoral and post-doctoral fellowships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, including a Federalism and Federations grant for travel to the United States to research U.S. extradition law. After spending four years as a visiting scholar and post-doctoral fellow at the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle, he was named an honorary research associate of the University of British Columbia Faculty of Law, where he remains a Paetzold Fellow. As a legal consultant on extradition practice, he has advised law firms in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and has lectured on extradition in universities across the country and in Oxford, U.K. In 2015, he received Trent University’s Distinguished Alumnus lifetime achievement award. He is the author of The Orwellian World of Jehovah’s Witnesses (University of Toronto Press), Fundamental Freedoms and Jehovah’s Witnesses (University of Calgary Press), Extradition between Canada and the United States (New York: Brill), Canadian Extradition Law (LexisNexis Canada), Halsbury's Extradition and Mutual Legal Assistance (LexisNexis Canada) and Wrongful Conviction in Canadian Law (LexisNexis Canada), and co-author (with Vincent Larochelle and Alison Yule) of Dangerous Offender Law (LexisNexis Canada).