Shoplifter loses appeal to reduce nine-month house arrest

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A prolific shoplifter who pleaded guilty to stealing from three downtown Vancouver clothing stores and was sentenced to nine months of house arrest — more than double what prosecutors sought — has lost her appeal against the sentence.

The sentence handed down in Downtown Community Court in April restricts Nicole Murphy, 39, to her residence from 4 p.m. to 7 a.m. and came after she pleaded guilty to three counts of shoplifting while on probation a year earlier similar crimes.

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The lower court judge noted, “There’s a part of me that just wants to give you a straight jail sentence, hoping that would deter you,” adding that he sentenced her to house arrest because “you get out of the problems seem to remain if you are under a suspended sentence.”

Murphy appealed to the Supreme Court to reduce the house arrest to four months, but Judge Maria Morellato rejected that, relying on precedent to rule that the sentence was not “demonstrably inappropriate.”

The three most recent offenses to which Murphy pleaded guilty were fleeing with a pile of pants from the Lululemon store on Robson Street in August 2023, four months later walking out of a Victoria’s Secret store with $750 worth of lingerie, and four months after that “literally filling two bags full of sports bras, pants and hats worth about $1,200 at the Abercrombie and Fitch store in Pacific Center before taking a cab to the Downtown Eastside,” the reasons for the judgment read. They all happened around 5 p.m., the judge wrote.

The court judge heard that Murphy has several mental health problems, including fentanyl use, that he is being treated for schizophrenia by a psychiatrist, that he had begun opiate substitution therapy at the time of sentencing and that he plans to enter counseling, said the judge of the Supreme Court.

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The prosecutor had asked for four months’ house arrest, saying Murphy had 25 previous convictions for theft under $5,000 dating back to 2009 and that she “doesn’t seem to be deterred” but is doing “surprisingly well” with house arrest, Morellato wrote.

The defense proposed three months of house arrest and did not reach a joint sentencing agreement with the prosecutor, meaning the lower court judge was free to change the sentence, which she did, up to the nine months, she wrote.

“I think the stores need a break from you, Ms. Murphy,” the judge said. And he told her that if she stole during this suspended sentence and appeared before him again, she would be sentenced to prison.

“I am confident that the judge was legitimately concerned about Ms. Murphy’s 25 prior shoplifting crimes and her apparently ‘brazen’ and continued shoplifting attempts during her probation,” Morellato wrote. “He expressly refers to the need to discourage such behavior.”

She noted that Murphy also had a total of 57 previous convictions, including for theft, assault and weapons possession, and that the judge focused only on the 25 thefts when determining the sentence.

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Street riots and repeat offenders committing offenses while on bail were a concern in the recent provincial election, an issue Premier David Eby wanted to address when he first became premier in November 2022.

He then announced two new measures, one intended to strengthen enforcement and the other to strengthen intervention services to “help people break the cycle of life in and out of prison” with programs such as a new model of addiction treatment at St. Paul’s Hospital.

In January 2023, BC became the first Canadian province to decriminalize possession of hard drugs, but the province responded to public concerns about increased drug use, drunkenness and public disorder and moved to ban illegal drug use in public places, including hospitals and parks.

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