Thoughts on Questions and Answers with Chad Barton

With today’s post I conclude a series of three posts involving The Goodbye Man by Chad Barton. Below this post are the posts for Questions and Answers with Chad and my review of the book. In this post I discuss the Questions posed to Chad and his Answers.

Unlike Chad I do not believe in the death penalty. As set out in my review I am Catholic and I support the church’s position against the death penalty. I do not think the state should decide who should live or die. Further I am aware of the frailties of our judicial system. Miscarriages of justice do take place. When I was in law school in the 1970’s a teenager, David Milgaard, was convicted of the rape and murder of a young woman in Saskatoon. Mainly because of his mother’s never ending efforts the case was re-examined. When all the evidence came out the true killer was identified and convicted. Milgaard was released after 23 years of wrongful imprisonment. Had there been the death penalty in Canada he would have been executed long before he was exonerated. A Royal Commission of Inquiry was held into his wrongful conviction. The Commission’s website is http://www.justice.gov.sk.ca/milgaard/.

Chad further supports mandatory maximum life sentences without parole for certain child molesters. I believe there should be life sentences for certain molesters. I am against mandatory sentences.

There is an arbitrariness to mandatory sentences that I believe is reflected in Chad’s answers. A teacher having intercourse with a teenage student would not draw the mandatory maximum but a doctor or priest fondling young boys would receive the mandatory maximum.

Communities may support the principle of mandatory sentences for strangers but not in my experience for people they personally know. In our community a long respected family doctor was convicted of fondling several young boys when they were patients. He was sent to prison for several years. I never heard anyone in our city say he should have received a life sentence.

I have personally dealt with families where there was a member of the family abusing others in the family. In one case, after the abuser served a jail sentence, the family addressed the abuse. With a mandatory life sentence I do not believe they could ever have reconciled and re-united as a family.

The last question concerns Robert Latimer, a farmer from Saskatchewan. As set out he killed his severely disabled daughter because he could not stand to see her continuing to suffer excruciating pain. He was convicted of second degree murder in two trials. (His first trial had been overturned on appeal because of prosecutorial misconduct.) In Canada a conviction for second degree murder draws a minimum sentence of 10 years in jail. Canadian juries do not know the prospective sentence if an accused is convicted. From all the information around the trials it was clear that the juries would not have convicted of second degree murder had they known there was a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years. The second trial judge, even though it was contrary to the Criminal Code, tried to sentence Latimer to a lesser sentence on the basis it was cruel and unusual punishment to sentence him to 10 years. On appeal the sentence was increased to the 10 year minimum. I think the trial judge should have had the discretion to impose a sentence of less than 10 years. Readers seeking more information can look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Latimer.

I do not support mandatory sentences. They produce as many injustices as they purport to correct.