Latimer seeks pardon for murder conviction
Robert Latimer, the Saskatchewan farmer who became a controversial national figure after what he claimed was the 1993 mercy killing of his severely disabled 12-year-old daughter, wants to be pardoned.
The now 65-year-old was twice tried for murdering Tracey. He placed her in the cab of his pickup truck and ran a hose from the exhaust pipe, igniting a passionate countrywide debate about the rights of those suffering severe, disabling conditions unable to communicate.
Latimer said he was the victim of a miscarriage of justice, and on Wednesday asked federal Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould to use her powers under the Criminal Code to review his case and pardon him pursuant to the Royal Prerogative of Mercy.
Latimer’s daughter had cerebral palsy because of oxygen deprivation due to faulty hospital equipment at birth.
She was a quadriplegic, bedridden, with the mind of an infant. She had metal rods in her spine, was subject to seizures five or six times a day, and was facing more disfiguring surgery.
Her father insisted the continuing treatment forced her to live in “incessant agony.”
At the time, medically assisted death was a crime.
Latimer maintained he deserved a pardon based on “the deprivation of Tracey’s right to lawful access to pain management” and “the deliberate corruption of his jury by the RCMP and prosecutor in his first trial and by the Supreme Court of Canada’s exhortation to pardon him at paragraphs 89 and 90 of their 2001 reasons for judgment (on the second).”
The top bench could find no legal reason to intervene but emphasized the remedy available under executive privilege.
Latimer argued that had his daughter received the painkillers she deserved she would have died, so doctors did not administer them condemning her to unbearable pain and misery.
“Tracey Latimer’s life should have ended ‘unintentionally’ as a secondary consequence of her physicians’ administration of opiates to alleviate her pain; her life should not have ended by her father’s merciful and intentional administration of carbon monoxide,” Vancouver lawyer Jason Gratl said in a letter copied to the Prime Minister accompanying the application obtained by Postmedia.
“The unlawful insistence of members of the medical profession that Tracey should suffer placed Robert Latimer in a position that led him to break the law ... (He) is a victim of medical malpractice.”
The first trial was overturned because of jury tampering, but Latimer was convicted the second time and sentenced to mandatory life imprisonment with a 10-year minimum before parole.
In upholding the outcome, the Supreme Court focused on Latimer’s initial attempts to conceal his involvement, his lack of remorse, his position of trust, the significant degree of planning and premeditation, and his daughter’s extreme vulnerability.
On the other hand, it also noted his good character, standing in the community, his anxiety about his daughter’s well-being and his laudable perseverance as a caring parent.
“One of the great cruelties of political power is that it so rarely affords decisive moments where choice can be unequivocally exercised and the values of those holding power can shine forth,” Gratl said.
“Power is so often subjugated by responsibility, the intricate web of foreseeable consequences and fear of the unpredictable. Granting a pardon to Mr. Latimer does not detract from any value or principle and offers Canadians the rarest of mirrors through which to appreciate the meaning of our collective association. A pardon would offer a glimpse of mercy, compassion and justice that the legal system and the medical system did not afford to the Latimers.”
Latimer was granted day parole in Feb. 2008 and full parole in Nov. 2010.
“No other case in Canadian history so clearly exhorts the executive of government to exercise the royal prerogative to rectify an injustice that the Court felt unable to remedy,” Gratl added.
“The (SCC) exhortation is, in my submission, a reflection of the harsh reality that Mr. Latimer was sacrificed in an attempt to preserve aspects of the delicate conceptual artifice of the line between lawful and unlawful death.”
The department did not respond to a request for comment by deadline.