After he was arrested about three months ago, Dennis Faulkner had pleaded with a provincial court judge to let him go.
“Can you release me? Can you please just release me?” Faulkner, 35, had asked Judge Colin Flynn, insisting he had nothing to do with three robberies in the St. John’s area the previous evening.
Friday morning, Faulkner finally got his wish. He was released from custody, but will have to return to court later this month to face charges connected to one of the robberies as well as two counts of uttering threats.
Faulkner was charged last August with threatening two people, and released with an order to have no contact with them. On Friday, he pleaded guilty to breaching that order twice in February.
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Judge Paul Noble sentenced him to 60 days in jail, and, with credit for the 102 days he has spent on remand, it equalled time served.
Faulkner will be back in court June 26, when he’ll go to trial on the threats charges. His other matters — a robbery charge and other court order breaches — will be called at that time for an update.
On March 19, a Subway restaurant on Water Street, Campbell Avenue Convenience store and an Ultramar location on Blackmarsh Road were all robbed within a span of two hours. Faulkner and 36-year-old Jeremy Leonard were arrested shortly thereafter. While Faulkner was charged in connection with the Subway robbery only, Leonard was charged in relation to all three.
Neither of the men are strangers to the courts. Leonard, who was charged 10 years ago with a string of thefts from a downtown furrier, where he repeatedly used a rock to smash a window and steal clothing, had recently finished parole after serving federal time for a number of crimes.
Faulkner has a 17-page criminal record, which includes multiple assaults, uttering threats, forging documents, fraud, armed robbery, robbery, mischief, and break and entry. In 2007 he was sentenced to five years behind bars for an incident in which he stabbed a man 28 times, beat him with a hammer and robbed him in his own home.
A medical expert testified at trial that Faulkner suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome and knew right from wrong, but didn’t have the mental capacity to appreciate the consequences of some of his actions.
The judge accepted that Faulker was less culpable, but didn’t accept that he didn’t know what he was doing.
Twitter: @tara_bradbury
