The Yukon Court of Appeal has dismissed a dangerous offender's argument he didn't get a fair trial on a forcible seizure charge when the trial judge kicked him out of the courtroom for being violent.

In a unanimous written decision released Wednesday, the three-judge panel tossed out Thomas Sharp's appeal after a hearing in Vancouver last month.

'The trial judge did not err in the manner in which he conducted the trial,' wrote Justice Catherine Ryan.

'In spite of the appellant's actions, the trial judge fairly and properly weighed the evidence against the appellant and rendered a verdict according to law.'

Sharp, 42, made several arguments about how the trial judge, the now-retired judge Ralph Hudson, should have conducted the trial. However, the appeal court instead said the only real issue was whether evidence identifying Sharp as the victim's attacker, evidence not explored at trial, would have made a difference.

After a further conviction of armed sexual assault, Sharp was declared a dangerous offender. His appeal of that designation is set for late May.

At the March 5 appeal hearing into the forcible seizure conviction, Sharp's lawyer argued if the trial judge had encouraged the man to get another lawyer, the evidence of identity would have undergone rigorous scrutiny, Ryan wrote.

'No doubt this is so,' Ryan said. 'There are times, however, when, in spite of the efforts of the trial judge, the self-represented accused rejects the helping hand of the court. In my view, this was one of those cases.'

Later in the decision, Ryan went on to say, 'An accused who chooses to discharge counsel and represent himself cannot later complain on appeal that his conduct of the trial did not reach the level of a competent lawyer. In discharging his lawyer, the accused assumes the risks and disadvantages of appearing without a lawyer.'

Sharp had been charged with forcible seizure in early November 2001 after a man tried to pull a 22-year-old B.C. university student into a forested area behind a Granger subdivision bus stop. Both she and the man had just stepped off a city bus that had arrived from downtown.

The young woman, who was on her school's karate team, managed to escape the man's grasp by hipchecking him and biting his hand.

At the start of his November 2002 trial, Sharp was removed from the courtroom after he began kicking the prisoner's docket. He also yelled and swore at a pair of plainclothes policemen seated in the back of the public gallery.

In his reasons for judgment, Hudson had also noted it appeared that Sharp struck one of the two guards with his two hands.

Through his counsel, Gord Coffin, Sharp then told the court he wouldn't promise to behave, refused to be present in the courtroom and declined to have any lawyer represent him.

He repeated those sentiments once Hudson had him brought back to court, and kicked the docket again when RCMP guards led him from the room.

Once the trial proceeded, Hudson ordered Sharp brought back to the courtroom so the victim could say whether he was her attacker.

After she pointed him out, the offender began yelling and picked up a chair, raising it to his chest. Before he was hustled out of the courtroom, Sharp managed to headbutt one of the RCMP guards.

Hudson renewed his order that Sharp be kept out of the courtroom. The judge had audio tapes and transcripts of the proceedings delivered to Sharp's Whitehorse Correctional Centre cell.

The man was permitted to testify on his own behalf and give closing arguments via closed-circuit television from another courtroom.

'The accused was prejudiced by not being able to cross-examine Crown witnesses or put to them perceived inconsistent prior statements and present other matters in cross-examination, or receive advice about that,' wrote Hudson at the time.

'This occurred as a result of his own conduct, his own choice to not be present in the courtroom and his own choice to discharge his counsel.... The court is not obliged to make special rulings contrary to established rules to assist an accused who has so conducted himself.'

Under common law, the court shall help guide an accused who is without a lawyer.

At appeal, Sharp had argued Hudson shouldn't have barred him from the courtroom and that the judge should have made some arrangements for him to cross-examine witnesses, possibly through video conference.

He also said Hudson should have told him he could recall witnesses to put inconsistencies in their trial testimony and prior statements to them, and that Hudson, once he learned of the inconsistencies, should have adjourned the matter to consider getting a lawyer for Sharp or calling a mistrial.

'It could not be clearer that the appellant was determined to disrupt this trial no matter what assistance the court offered him,' Ryan wrote for the appeal court.

Besides essentially ruling that Sharp reaped what he sowed, the appeal court's ruling went over the evidence identifying Sharp as the young woman's assailant.

As well as picking him out in court, the young woman, whose identity is protected by a publication ban, picked Sharp out of an RCMP photo lineup the day after she was attacked.

Although he didn't provide preliminary hearing transcripts to the appeal court, Coffin told the appeal panel in March that the victim had testified at the preliminary inquiry that she'd seen Sharp's photo daily at her workplace. It had been posted there following an RCMP public notification of the man as a convicted sexual offender recently released from a U.S. jail.

As well, the young woman had agreed at the preliminary hearing that after she picked Sharp out of a photo lineup, her boss had showed her Sharp's photo in their workplace and told her it was the same man she'd picked out.

Neither of those statements were put to the victim at trial.

'These omissions aside, the trial judge carefully examined all of the other evidence of identity in this case and concluded that it was very strong,' Ryan said.

Ryan noted that another woman on the bus the victim took to the Granger subdivision had spotted Sharp and recognized him from the police notification photo published in the Whitehorse Star and posted on her daughter's school hallway.

After she was attacked, the young university student called 911 at 3:28 p.m. Twelve minutes later, two Mounties driving near Sharp's home in the Arkell subdivision saw the sex offender out walking, wearing clothing similar to the description given by the young woman. As well, a school bus driver saw Sharp and gave a similar clothing description.

Sharp testified that he'd been out walking that day, and that he'd come home on an earlier bus.