Last fall, Superior Court Justice Michael Code opted for leniency. Christian Collins, a Toronto man with a lengthy criminal record, stood before him having pleaded guilty to cocaine trafficking and possessing a loaded firearm. Instead of locking him up, Code gave Collins a conditional sentence of two years less a day, ordering him to live under house arrest and perform community service.
“I am satisfied that he is completely reformed,” Code wrote in his decision, which took effect on Oct. 24, 2023. In court on Friday, Code ruefully revisited those words, finding that the 29-year-old Collins was most likely involved in a downtown Toronto armed robbery that took place just days after his sentence had started.
In a remarkable hearing on Friday, Code — one of the most senior and respected jurists in Ontario — admitted that he had been convinced Collins had “given up his previous life of crime,” and had believed his testimony that he was a reformed man with a newfound love of fatherhood and his rap career. “I believed you were sincere,” Code told Collins, reading from a 25-page decision ordering him to spend the rest of his conditional sentence behind bars. Two days after Code handed him what a prosecutor called a “chance of a lifetime” — Collins allegedly left a meeting with his probation officer and drove to an Etobicoke Home Depot, where he bought two sets of DeWalt walkie-talkies.
The next afternoon, on Oct. 27, 2023, video surveillance captured two men, one white-skinned, bearded and wearing a FedEx uniform, ringing the doorbell at a luxury watch dealer on Spadina Avenue; when no one answered the door, the pair left. Three days later, on Oct.
30, cameras again caught two similarly dressed men, one with a walkie-talkie like the brand Collins purchased. The suspect posing as a FedEx employee carried a small cardboard box and used it as a ruse to gain entry. When an employee opened the door, the fake deliveryman pulled out a gun and he and his accomplice ordered the occupants to lie on the floor.
The thieves then began piling watches into a large cardboard box — which overflowed, some scattering on the floor — before fleeing. Their loot? One hundred and fifty-five watches — primarily Rolexes — valued at approximately $6.5 million, along with $200,000 in cash.
But the robbers left behind a key piece of evidence: the box the fake deliveryman had brought to the robbery. Inside, there was a balaclava linked to Collins by DNA evidence; a COVID mask with DNA traces from two individuals, one matching Collins; and a Home Depot receipt for the walkie-talkies. Collins was arrested by Toronto police in May of this year.
He was charged with a variety of robbery-related crimes — and for violating Code’s conditional sentence order. Collins, who is well-known in Toronto’s underground hip-hop scene as the rapper Da Crook, has been in custody ever since. A hearing on a breach of a conditional sentence order, like Friday’s, turns on the judge’s assessment of the case on “the balance of probabilities” — a lower standard than the criminal threshold of “beyond a reasonable doubt.
” The criminal case against Collins has not yet been tested in court. Asked about the outcome of Friday’s hearing, his defence lawyer Kim Schofield said her client “steadfastly maintains his innocence, but was not in a position, because of the nature of the proceedings, to put forward a full defence.” Earlier this month, prosecutor Zach Kerbel told the judge the evidence — albeit circumstantial — clearly implicated Collins.
Not only is the breach “extremely serious and dangerous criminal conduct,” it is made worse by the timing, days after being “given the chance of a lifetime by your Honour,” Kerbel told Code. “Your Honour stuck your neck out for Mr. Collins, and Mr.
Collins knew it.” For her part, Schofield argued her client was framed. Acknowledging the seemingly damning evidence, she said the “robbery box” was purposefully left behind to implicate Collins by unknown individuals.
“It is a strange and perplexing, I would say, circumstance that the items that link Mr. Collins to the robbery are literally delivered in a box,” Schofield told Code on July 4. “There is .
.. no reason whatsoever that those items were brought to the scene, and just left there.
” As for the walkie-talkies purchased at Home Depot, Schofield said there was a perfectly legitimate reason to buy them — they’re used in music video shoots. (Collins’s music videos have hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube.) Toronto police Const.
Boris Borissov’s testimony was “completely unworthy of belief,” Judge Mary She noted Collins has been targeted in the past. In December 2019, Collins was in his car outside his home when two men fired about 40 bullets in his direction — two striking him. Kerbel called the defence theory “highly improbable,” noting that if someone framed him, they found someone matching his physical description — one of the robbery victims described a light-skinned black male about six feet tall.
Surveillance footage of the heist revealed the “bumbling, unprofessional” duo hastily trying to make off with the watches, Kerbel explained, saying it’s not far-fetched to believe they would abandon the highly incriminating “robbery box.” The video also captured one of them trying to return, only to find the door locked. Collins was one of with guns, drugs and criminal organization offences resulting from Project Sunder, a lengthy police wiretap investigation into the activities of a group known as the Eglinton West Crips.
Police in Sudbury picked him up en route to selling crack cocaine on Manitoulin Island. The agreed statement of facts filed at the time of his guilty plea said Collins sold cocaine at the gram level and, “the prices for drugs on the island were double those in Toronto.” He admitted to timing his travels to when residents received government-issued social assistance cheques; he was caught with 24.
2 grams of cocaine, 46 oxycodone pills and a black scale with white residue. Based on an informer’s tip, Collins was separately charged with possessing a semi-automatic handgun found in his vehicle. The case against Collins was long and complex and involved protracted arguments about the Charter; of which Code found there were two breaches.
During the sentencing phase, the judge also heard a lot about Collins’ troubled background. Collins’ birth mother was murdered when he was 13 and, when he was 14, his best friend was shot and killed. He has a lengthy criminal record with 13 entries, most break and enter and drug-related, with one crime of violence — an assault.
But the judge also heard many positive things about Collins, particularly the development of his music career during the three years since his release on bail following , and the way he has embraced fatherhood since the birth of his daughter with his partner. She and several others wrote letters to the judge praising Collins for his efforts at rehabilitation and track record of mentoring disadvantaged youth. Code wrote: “It may be the most difficult sentencing decision that I have encountered” in trying to balance the aggravating and mitigating factors.
The judge concluded that rather than locking Collins up, “the more effective way to address” the needs for denunciation and deterrence was to impose a maximum conditional sentence with strict terms that would require Collins to continue the crime prevention work in his community. He also took another unusual step: He ordered that he personally receive written reports both from Collins and his sentence supervisor. “I want to be directly involved in ensuring that the terms of the sentence are being carried out,” Code wrote in his October 2023 sentencing reasons.
Last December, after the robbery but before Collins’s arrest in May — he came to court to ask Code to vary his conditions so he could travel abroad to promote his music. The judge declined, saying it was too soon. “You need to keep up the really good work you’re doing and get further down the path,” Code told him.
On Friday, Code told Collins he had no choice but to revoke the conditional sentence, which means he has about 15 months left to serve in custody. He also still must stand trial for the robbery. Code addressed him directly.
“I hope it’s not that I was wrong, I hope it’s just I was just too soon,” Code told him, referring to all the letters of support on how he was a changed man. “A lot of people, they take one step forward, two steps back,” and just need more time. “That doesn’t mean I’ve lost faith, I want you to understand that, I still have hope,” Code said, noting he saw Collins cry in court after his arrest, after he saw his now three-year-old daughter.
“You were really upset...
(and) spoke from the heart,” he said. “Be a man, be strong.” In six months, Code told him he’ll no longer be sitting on the bench — so he’s unlikely to see Collins in a courtroom ever again.
But, perhaps one day, the two men will see each other on the street one day; Code said he’ll look forward to hearing Collins tell him about his life. Collins declined an interview outside court after the October 2023 sentencing hearing. In a later text message exchange with the Star, Collins wrote that he doesn’t know “one person that really lives this life that wouldn’t take a way out if it was as easy as that.
“But this life follows you. And it shows no mercy,” he wrote. The majority of people who carry firearms, he added, are “f—-ing terrified.
They don’t want to die.”.
