The woman pauses for a second. She lifts the sleeve of her sweatshirt to wipe the pepper spray from her face, then folds her hands behind her back and drops to her knees, clearly resigned to the handcuffs that are quickly snapped on her wrists.

So it ended, an incident lasting 18 minutes during which an agitated Serena Tobaccojuice, currently one of Canada’s longest-serving female inmates, blocked the door of her Nova Scotia prison unit, grasping tweezers bent into a weapon, threatening and preventing two guards from leaving.

How Tobaccojuice, a Cree woman from Saskatchewan, ended up facing charges in Truro, N.S., 3,000 kilometres from her home province, is now at the heart of an extraordinary argument in the criminal case she faces involving the two correctional officers.

Her defence l

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