No hope for Bobbitt: Crown

Photo: Deborah Pfeiffer

David Bobbitt arrives at Penticton courthouse in June 2014.

David Bobbitt is a psychopath with little hope for rehabilitation and should be jailed for an indeterminate amount of time, B.C. Supreme Court heard Thursday. 

The Crown's closing arguments in Bobbitt's dangerous offender hearing focused on a psychiatric evaluation performed last summer by Dr. Shabehram Lohrasbe. The Crown is pushing to have Bobbitt labelled a dangerous offender, meaning he could be jailed for the rest of his life with no parole. 

Crown contends he would be a consistent danger to the public, and Crown counsel Debra Drissell brought forward several points to make her case. 

"It would take a monumental effort to make changes over years to implement the changes that Bobbitt would have to make," Lohrasbe's transcript reads. "With Mr. Bobbitt, we don't even have a starting position that could offer any hope. 

"For the majority of the offenders I assess, I don't write such relentlessly negative reports. I just couldn't find things in this man to hang my hat on in terms of providing the judge with some indication there's a path forward. I couldn't see any." 

Bobbitt was violent and disruptive from a young age. He apparently carried a knife by age 13 and grade school records showed on different occasions he told a teacher to shut up, gave her the finger and fought other children.

Bobbitt told Lohrasbe his problems were because of pain associated with deep vein thrombosis. However, medical records don't support that.

Arguing against Bobbitt's rehabilitation prospects, Lohrasbe said he was unable to trust anything Bobbitt says. "This man has no devotion to the truth. He will simply say anything that will paint him in the best possible light."

Drissell said Bobbitt was reckless with the truth and the words he used in the interview with Lohrasbe. 

In his psychiatric evaluation, Bobbitt claimed that if he didn't go to jail, he would take care of the victim with his "enormous wealth."

"Bobbitt said 'thank god I didn't hurt her too bad. It could have been a lot worse,' but did not elaborate," Drissell said of the brutal 2011 assault in a Penticton store. 

Lohrasbe presumed that based on what Bobbitt said, he meant he could have killed his victim, but didn't.

Bobbitt subjected the woman to cigarette burns, biting, prolonged confinement, prolonged sexual assault and repeated blows to the head with a hammer. 

The assault involved forced vaginal and anal intercourse and biting. In other testimony, he called the victim a "tough bitch" who "was afraid to die, so didn't fall asleep."

Homicidal thoughts cropped up multiple times in Bobbitt's past as well, court was told.

He apparently threatened to kill his former landlord and on another occasion threw a hammer from the second-storey balcony of his apartment at a man who owed him money.