PAROLE BATTLE
Brother of slain police officer Todd Baylis is fighting to keep his killer behind bars,
The brother of a Toronto police officer shot dead in the line of duty in 1994 is fighting to keep his killer behind bars.
Clinton Gayle, 50, is serving two life sentences for the first-degree murder of Brampton resident Const. Todd Baylis, and attempted murder of his partner Const. Mike Leone.
He is eligible for parole in June, after serving 25 years, and he has applied, according to Baylis’ brother Cory, who has started an online petition to keep Gayle behind bars.
“Clinton Gayle deserves to spend the rest of his natural life behind bars for the heinous and brutal execution-style murder of Constable Baylis and the attempted murder of Constable Leone,” Cory Baylis’s petition reads.
On the night of June 16, 1994, Baylis and Leone were doing a walk-through at an apartment building on Trethewey Dr. in Toronto.
They encountered Gayle in a stairwell and Baylis asked, “What’s up?” Gayle punched him in the chest and ran.
The two officers gave chase, but outside the building a deadly confrontation ensued. Baylis, whose ankle was broken, was shot in the head at close range. He was “executed,” the trial judge concluded.
Leone was shot in the back, but was able to return fire, hitting Gayle.
Baylis was just 25 and had been a police officer for four years.
Gayle had several previous convictions for drugs, gun possession and assault. His convictions and testimony “reveal him to be a gun-toting crack dealer who displays a brazen contempt for the law and those who enforce it,” Justice Ian Nordheimer concluded in a 2013 ruling denying him consideration for early parole.
Gayle claimed self-defence at trial, but Baylis never unholstered his gun, and Leone only shot after he had been shot, the court concluded.
More than 10,000 officers from across North America attended Baylis’s funeral, which was the largest police funeral in Canadian history.
A Brampton park was named after him, as was a street in Toronto near Black Creek Dr. and Trethewey Dr.
The petition demands that “life in the Canadian justice system should mean life.”
“Perpetrators of extremely violent crimes such as this do not deserve a second chance,” the petition reads. “It is a life sentence for the victims of such crimes, it should be a life sentence for the perpetrators as well.”
Many of Cory Baylis’s former classmates at Bramalea Secondary School are changing their Facebook profiles to a picture of Baylis, remembering him as a “gentle, caring and wonderful man, taken too soon.”
Todd Baylis graduated from Chinguacousy Secondary School.
Peel Regional Police Association president Adrian Woolley changed his Twitter photo to a picture of Baylis, also.
“I want to bring as much attention as I can to stop Todd’s killer . . . ,” Woolley tweeted.
A life sentence allows a prisoner to apply for parole after serving 25 years.
Gayle failed in a bid for parole in 2013, under the “faint hope clause” which allows a prisoner to seek permission to apply for parole earlier than 25 years.
Nordheimer denied his request to apply, concluding at the time that Gayle was not a “model prisoner” and his score for violent recidivism had remained unchanged at moderate in the 19 years he had been behind bars.
The petition will be delivered to the Parole Board of Canada, Correctional Service Canada and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.