If Bernardo were in the U.S.,
Rapist-murderer had no chance for parole under law
Had he committed his crimes in the U.S., Paul Bernardo wouldn’t have had the chance to spend Wednesday arguing for his freedom in front of a parole board.
Rather, the notorious serial rapist and murderer of two teenage girls would either be dead or be definitively fated to die in jail.
“At the very least, an offence of this sort would make an offender eligible for the death penalty or life without parole in just about every jurisdiction,” said Douglas Berman, a frequent author on sentencing issues based at Ohio State University.
The U.S. justice system frequently receives criticism for its harsh treatment of virtually all offences. With more than two million people behind bars, the United States has the world’s highest rate of incarceration.
However, the U.S. justice system can do something that Canada cannot: Conclusively ensure that a heinous criminal like Bernardo never has a chance at freedom.
Bernardo was convicted in 1995 on a raft of charges that included two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of kidnapping, two counts of aggravated sexual assault and one count of offering an indignity to a human body.
The charges were all made in connection with the abduction, rape, torture and murder of Ontario teenagers Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French in the early 1990s. Later, Bernardo would also plead guilty to a rash of serial rapes he committed against randomly selected teenage girls in the late 1980s.
Notably, Bernardo’s case also lacks many of the usual ambiguities that might land him a lighter sentence in the U.S. His mental fitness was not in question, and jurors were shown videotapes taken by Bernardo of the crimes.
If those crimes were committed today in the United States, Bernardo would face the possibility of capital punishment in 30 states. In the other 20, he would likely be facing life without the possibility of parole.
“Although the (death penalty) is used very selectively, the aggravated facts of Bernardo’s case would certainly cause prosecutors to seek the death penalty if state law allowed it,” said Richard Frase, a law professor and sentencing expert at the University of Minnesota.
If Bernardo had committed his crimes in a death penalty state, the most likely scenario is that U.S. prosecutors would have initially pursued capital punishment, but then offered to bump the charges down to life without parole if Bernardo pleaded guilty.
Bernardo’s actual sentence was 25 years in custody before he could apply for parole. Although his various convictions each carried prison terms that would have easily added up to nearly 100 years, he served the sentences concurrently. He had been eligible to apply for day parole since 2015, and full parole since February.
Canadian legal experts are generally in agreement that the likelihood of Bernardo obtaining release from prison is almost nil. However, Canada has no method to put a criminal behind bars without the possibility that they could one day be granted freedom by a parole board.
Bernardo will now be able to request a parole hearing every two years for the rest of his life.
Victim’s advocates have often complained that this aspect of Canadian law forces the families of murder victims to live in a constant state of limbo, particularly as they need to repeatedly attend parole board hearings to argue against a killer’s release. This was the case with the repeated parole hearings requested by notorious child killer Clifford Olson.
“For 30 years I haven’t really had a chance to heal some wounds because of him,” Ray King, father of Olson victim Ray King Jr., said after Olson’s 2011 death from cancer.
At Bernardo’s first hearing this week, the families of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French attended at their own expense over fears that the killer would be freed.
Even dangerous offender status, often touted as imposing an “indefinite” prison sentence on incarcerated criminals, is surprisingly malleable. Dangerous offenders can apply for parole after only seven years. They are also frequently given day parole or transferred into minimum-security facilities.
Serial rapist Darrell Peter Moosomin was given dangerous offender status after he pleaded guilty in 1995 to repeatedly raping and beating a woman he had held hostage. Despite this, in 2016 corrections officials granted Moosomin day leave to attend an Alberta powwow from which he easily escaped.
If convicted in Canada today, however, Bernardo could expect to face a much harsher sentence than the one he received in 1995. A new law passed in 2011 eliminated the practice of multiple murderers being mandated to serve their sentences concurrently.
Thus, Bernardo would have likely received 25 years in prison each for Mahaffy and French, leaving him ineligible to apply for parole until 2043.
FOR 30 YEARS I HAVEN’T REALLY HAD A CHANCE TO HEAL.