INTOLERABLE CRUELTY?
‘Harsh’ 2011 law could keep Eaton Centre shooter from getting parole for 50 years
Lawyer of Eaton Centre shooter plans charter challenge if client handed more than 25-year sentence,
A sentencing hearing begins Friday for the man who opened fire in the crowded Eaton Centre food court, convicted by a jury of two counts of second-degree murder and five counts of aggravated assault.
Christopher Husbands faces an automatic life sentence — but it is up to Superior Court Justice Eugene Ewaschuk to decide how long he must wait before he can apply for parole.
After the jury delivered its verdict last month, the Crown said it would be seeking consecutive periods of parole ineligibility under a 2011law that applies in cases involving multiple murders. This means Husbands, now 25, could be forced to serve up to 50 years in prison before he could apply for parole, instead of up to 25 years.
If Husbands faces a sentence of more than 25 years, his lawyer, Dirk Derstine, plans to argue the recently enacted law is unconstitutional because it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.
Derstine will first argue that consecutive sentencing is not applicable in Husbands’ case because the murders happened so close together in time.
“It’s not a situation where it was one killing, then, after a measurable distance, another killing,” he said
Should that argument fail, the next step is a Charter challenge.
The law in question, part of the Protecting Canadians by Ending Sentencing Discounts for Multiple Murderers Act, has been used twice before.
First, it was applied in the case of Travis Baumgartner, a former armoured-car driver in Edmonton who shot and killed three of his co- workers and was sentenced to life with no parole eligibility for 40 years.
Last year, Justin Bourque was sentenced to life in prison with no parole for 75 years, for killing three RCMP officers in Moncton.
The intent of the law, according to the federal government, is to better reflect the seriousness of the crimes and to ensure the sentencing process will acknowledge the value of each life taken.
Bourque’s sentence was the harshest handed down since the death penalty was abolished.
He will be 99 years old before he can apply for parole.
The argument for declaring the law unconstitutional is that it puts a person in prison indefinitely with no hope, explains University of British Columbia law professor Isabel Grant.
“It’s essentially life without parole,” she said. “Particularly with someone who is relatively young, the idea that there is no possibility for rehabilitation sort of belies the idea that somebody can turn themselves around and contribute to society in a meaningful way.”
All the parole ineligibility period does is limit the parole board, she adds. “(This law says) we’re not going to trust the parole board, we’re going to decide now, 25 years in advance.”
Without the incentive for good behaviour provided by the hope of parole, there could be safety ramifications for inmates and guards, Grant added.
“The 25-year sentence on its own is already an extremely harsh sentence, which would have terrible psychological effects on most people,” said Archibald Kaiser, a law professor at the Schulich School of Law. “(Consecutive life sentences) don’t seem to have any penological purpose. It looks just like vengeance. The notion of revenge doesn’t belong in a modern criminal justice system.”
He argues that such a sentence would not serve to deter future crimes and gives up on the notion of rehabilitation and restraint.
“There should be a degree of concordance with what we are willing to do to people and what we are looking to accomplish as a society,” he said. “We shouldn’t be comforted by the notion that there are only a few people on whom we are willing to inflict such a harsh penalty.”