Mark McDiarmid has been sentenced to 40 months in jail for smashing an RCMP truck with a sledgehammer, throwing an unlit Molotov cocktail at police and running at two officers with an axe.

He’s already served the time in pre-sentence custody.

Justice Elizabeth Hughes handed down her ruling this morning in Yukon Supreme Court. Crown prosecutor Jennifer Grandy had proposed a four-year jail term.

Though he’s served his sentence, McDiarmid won’t be released, as he faces other charges laid while he was in custody last year. He was denied bail last winter.

McDiarmid, 36, was found guilty by a Dawson City jury in March of three counts of assaulting RCMP officers with a weapon, mischief and possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose.

He was acquitted of two counts of attempted murder.

In her decision today, Hughes read the facts of the offences.

On Oct. 19, 2011, when Sgt. Dave Wallace was attempting to bring McDiarmid to the Dawson RCMP detachment because his bail surety had surrendered him, McDiarmid approached him with a sledgehammer and hit his vehicle three times while Wallace was inside it. The officer then drove away.

The next day, RCMP officers located McDiarmid off the Dempster Highway near the North Fork Road.

He drove over a spike belt they’d laid on the ground, then threw a jar of gasoline with a wick in it at the windshield of one RCMP truck while two officers were inside.

They got out of the vehicle, and then he ran at them with a splitting maul. When he was two to three metres away, the two officers shot him.

McDiarmid has been at the Whitehorse Correctional Centre since.

That’s a period of three years and five months, with sentences he served during that time subtracted from the grand total.

While Grandy proposed enhanced credit of 1.25 days for every day he spent in pre-sentence custody, Hughes opted to give him 1.5 days instead.

That equals a total of 61.5 months served – 21.5 months more than the sentence handed down today.

McDiarmid, who is self-represented, refused to participate in the sentencing hearing. He has said he will appeal his convictions, and last month sought an adjournment of the sentencing.

His request was denied, because Hughes has no availability beyond July and she thought he was stalling.

In her decision today, she said McDiarmid made many attempts to “derail or frustrate” the process, like refusing to meet with a probation officer, not giving authority to a Gladue report writer to access his files and threatening his First Nation, the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, in an attempt to stop a staff worker from testifying at the sentencing.

He also made threats in court that he would stop the hearing, even if he had to get more criminal charges to do it.

An offender “is not entitled to hijack the court process, as Mr. McDiarmid has attempted to do,” Hughes said.

“Mr. McDiarmid is an individual who believes the laws and rules do not apply to him.”

Given the lack of current pre-sentence and Gladue reports, as well as a mental health evaluation, there’s a dearth of up-to-date information about him and about what kind of rehabilitation could be beneficial.

“The theme that emerges is that Mr. McDiarmid has difficulty with people in positions of authority, or people who oppose him,” Grandy said Monday in her submissions. “For the Crown, it’s a major concern going forward.

“The sad part is, I suppose, that Mr. McDiarmid will likely be released untreated.”

Hughes said today he may well have mental health issues, referring to an old pre-sentence report and a psychiatric report that suggest this.

Mitigating factors, said the judge, are that McDiarmid was a contributing member of society before his arrest, and that he continues to have strong community support.

He had no criminal record at the time of these offences, the court heard.

Aggravating factors are that McDiarmid accepts no responsibility for what he did, has shown escalating violence, and has no prospect of rehabilitation, Hughes said.

McDiarmid did not submit a position on sentencing to the court, although in letters and statements filed, he said he was seeking credit of three days for every day he served because his rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms were violated.

Police used excessive force when they shot him, and that also should factor into his sentence, he argued.

Hughes disagreed. The RCMP officers’ actions were justified, she said. Under the Criminal Code, the cap on enhanced credit is 1.5 days for each one.

Court heard that McDiarmid has spent time in segregation at the jail for bad behaviour, including possession of contraband and threats of violence, as well as eight months in voluntary separate confinement.

Grandy said staff at the jail gave McDiarmid additional privileges, including his own laptop that he could use in his cell, when other inmates must share a computer amongst their unit and only use it in the common area.

At one time, McDiarmid had discussions with the Yukon Legal Services Society about providing him a lawyer, but a letter read aloud in court yesterday from executive director Nils Clarke said it became clear no legal aid lawyer is suitable to McDiarmid.

To fulfill the Criminal Code’s Gladue requirement – that is, that the court must take into account the circumstances of aboriginal offenders’ backgrounds – Jody Beaumont, traditional knowledge specialist with the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, was subpoenaed to testify.

She said McDiarmid sent a fax last Friday that threatened possible civil action against the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in if she addressed the court.

Beaumont spoke generally about the First Nation’s history and culture, and the negative effects of the Gold Rush, trapping and hunting laws and residential schools on its people.

As part of his sentence, McDiarmid is not allowed to possess weapons for 10 years, and must give a DNA sample.