A 30-year-old man tried unsuccessfully to bargain with a territorial court judge over his sentence for robbery on Monday.

Chris Quash asked Chief Judge Karen Ruddy to make the “right choice” and either give him straight jail time or release him that day on probation.

“I’ve been in the system for a long time, since I was a young kid,” he told the judge. “I never really got help, but I know I need help. I’m struggling.”

With a lengthy criminal record, Quash said he knows his dependency on alcohol only gets him into trouble.

While he’s completed substance abuse and violence prevention programs in jail, he said, serving time doesn’t provide him with the help he needs to work through his issues.

But Quash also is distrustful of authority figures, and has had difficulty abiding by court-imposed conditions in the past.

Ruddy spoke kindly to the man, but told him probation would be an important part of his rehabilitation – and jail time would also be necessary.

“The offence before me is a really serious one,” she said. “You’re going to do some more time ... One of the things I have to think about is protection of the public.”

She handed him a 12-month jail sentence, plus two years of probation. The bulk of that time is for a robbery Quash committed earlier this year.

At about 6 p.m. last Feb. 21, Quash approached a woman at an ATM inside the CIBC in Whitehorse.

He told her he was going to kill her, and demanded she hand over her money.

She told him to stop talking like that, but he grabbed the cash as it came out of the machine.

The woman pushed Quash, and told him to give it back.

A man entered the bank who, upon the woman’s request for help, also instructed Quash to give the money back. He did.

Then Quash left the CIBC, walking toward another bank, said Crown prosecutor Sue Bogle.

RCMP officers found him intoxicated in the Main Street area and arrested him.

He was argumentative and unco-operative both at the time and later, at the detachment. He swore at officers, swung his arms, and laid on the floor.

He also gave police his brother’s name as his own.

Quash doesn’t remember the incident.

“I don’t even know what I was doing,” he said. “Everyday, I think about what I did. It was really wrong.”

The witness, Bogle said, was shaken up.

She said she called the police because she didn’t want the same thing to happen to someone else, adding she believes in second chances and hopes Quash gets the help he needs.

Bogle said this was a high-risk offence because it was a random, stranger attack.

“It could happen to anybody in the public,” she said.

“It’s concerning in relation to the protection of the public moving forward, that he committed this offence without having any memory of it.”

Quash’s lawyer, Gordon Coffin, sought a 12-month sentence plus a year’s probation – the same jail term proposed by Bogle, though she asked for two years’ probation.

“Mr. Quash understands his situation and what he needs to do to remedy it,” Coffin said.

“He’s interested in making those changes, but I think the difficulty becomes putting it into practice .... He hasn’t been able to do it on his own. He’s going to need help.”

In April, Quash had help. He was released from custody into Yukon Community Wellness Court. He lived at the Adult Resource Centre and was subject to a curfew and a ban on drinking alcohol.

For seven weeks, court heard, Quash was sober – the longest he’s been sober in his adult life.

But one night last June, he was arrested in Shipyards Park after police found him drunk and lying on a bench after his curfew.

Coffin said he wasn’t sure what triggered Quash’s relapse.

The man had a difficult childhood: he witnessed violence and alcohol abuse at home, his father spent time in jail, and his mother left the family when he was 12 years old.

He learned only this year she’d been murdered by a boyfriend.

“I really thought she was still alive,” Quash said. “That really messed me up.”

He started drinking and using drugs at that age, and was getting in trouble with the law by age 15.

“This is criminal behaviour that’s been ingrained for years ... so it’s not going to be changed easily,” Bogle said.

An assessment done several years ago showed Quash struggles with depression and possible fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

Ruddy sentenced him to eight months for the robbery, two months for obstructing RCMP, and two months for the breach of his conditions.

That’s a total of 12 months, though she gave him enhanced credit for the time he’s spent in custody.

That works out to an additional 113 days.

“I know that’s not what you want,” Ruddy said.

“What I want you to think about while you’re in custody for the next little while is how you’re going to make (probation) work. You need the help and you know you need the help.”

She said it appears he knows his drinking is a problem, but he must address the issues that drive him to drink, like grief.

Quash must also provide a sample of his DNA and is banned from owning firearms for life.