Woman convicted of disfiguring biting attack given reduced sentence because she’s Haitian

A sign for the Quebec Court of Appeal. It’s an established Canadian legal precedent that judges are required to consider the “collateral immigration consequences” of a criminal sentence. Photo by Adobe Stock

Article content

A Haitian woman who disfigured a stranger in a Montreal-area biting attack has been given a reduced sentence by a Quebec judge on the grounds that a harsher prison term would endanger her “precarious immigration status.”

Article content

Just two days after Christmas in 2022, Macdala Monfiston spent eight minutes viciously attacking a woman outside a bar in Laval, Que., leaving the victim with bite marks all over her arms and face.

Article content

Article content

Article content

Court records described one of the facial wounds as being “several centimetres long, necessitating repeated treatments and leaving a prominent scar.”

Article content

Article content

Article content

“When I tell people I was bit, they ask me what kind of animal, if it was by a pit bull. They can’t believe it’s a person who did this to me,” the victim told the paper in a French-language interview.

Article content

Although good Samaritans attempted to intervene, they were held back by Monfiston’s boyfriend.

Article content

After Monfiston pleaded guilty to aggravated assault in early 2025, a Court of Quebec judge sentenced her to four years in prison – the sentence already a fraction of the maximum 14-year sentence set for the crime under the Criminal Code.

Article content

But in a decision released this week, the Quebec Court of Appeal ruled that four years was too harsh, in part because it could possibly get her deported.

Article content

Under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, anyone jailed for longer than two years is deemed guilty of “serious criminality,” and loses their appeal rights in the case of a removal order.

Article content

Article content

“The prison sentence has a much greater impact on the defendant than on other offenders who might have committed similar acts,” reads the French-language decision, rendered on Sept. 14 by appeals court judges Suzanne Gagné, Christine Baudouin and Geneviève Marcotte.

Article content

Article content

The three judges instead handed down a sentence of two years minus one day, thus shielding Monfiston from any loss of her immigration appeal rights.

Article content

It’s an established Canadian legal precedent that judges are required to consider the “collateral immigration consequences” of a criminal sentence.

Article content

If a criminal conviction risks getting a foreign national removed from the country, judges must weigh this as a form of punishment, and then reduce the offender’s actual punishment accordingly.

Article content

It all stems from the 2013 Supreme Court decision R. v. Pham. The case involved a non-citizen, Hoang Pham, who was convicted of drug offences and initially sentenced to two years in prison.

Article content

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that lower courts had failed to consider how the sentence would render Pham unable to appeal a removal order.