Chemist gets 7 years for poisoning

From the inbox, via the Kingston Whig Standard: 

A researcher in Queen’s University’s chemistry department who admitted two months ago to dosing a fellow chemist with a compound principally used to induce cancers in lab animals was given the equivalent of a seven-year prison sentence on Tuesday. 

Twenty-six-year-old Zijie Wang pleaded guilty in Kingston’s Ontario Court of Justice in late October to administering a noxious substance to a post-doctoral fellow in his research group with intent to endanger the man’s life or cause bodily harm and a related charge of aggravated assault arising from the same circumstances. 

Justice Allan G. Letourneau — after a period of deliberation following sentencing submissions in early November from Wang’s lawyer, Brian Greenspan, and assistant Crown attorney Janet O’Brien — decided the Crown’s recommendation of seven years, minus pretrial custody was the more appropriate term. Accordingly, he gave Wang enhanced credit on the 250 days he’d already spent in pretrial custody, counting it as equivalent to 375 days already served, and sentenced him to a further 2,180 days in prison, or a week and a bit short of six years. 

Justice Letourneau, in his reasons for sentence, which he did not read in open court, was not satisfied that Wang “has sincere remorse.”

Read the whole thing here. It's awful.