Thank you.
First I'd like to thank Mr. Andrews and Senator Banks for taking up this issue and introducing legislation to improve this bail situation.
Here are five facts I want to put in evidence with this committee: murderers are dangerous; most people accused of murder actually did the killing; repeat killings are unpredictable; courts have no means, other than incarceration, to prevent second killings; and murder is not just another crime. I want to back up those five things with a little data.
One, murderers are dangerous. That's intuitively obvious, but the literature on murder is sprinkled with notations that the recidivism rate is very low, under 1%. That's nice and that's comforting, until you consider the fact that even at less than 1%, it is about 17 times the murder rate for the general population of Canada. That factor, 17, is based on recidivism statistics from the Canadian National Parole Board and population statistics from Statistics Canada. If you want to tune that number for more accuracy, I'm sure one of your staffers would have access to complete statistics on all murders throughout Canada for as far back as you care to look. I doubt very much that the number will change dramatically with more data.
Two, most people accused of murder actually did the killing. I used a 25-year study of murders in the Toronto area to demonstrate this fact: 85% of those accused actually did the killing. Again, a funded researcher could get a more accurate number, but the basic proposition stands. Most people accused of murder actually did the killing.
Three, repeat killings are unpredictable. Shirley Turner provided the most recent example that I know of in Canada, killing her son Zachary while free on bail, pending extradition to Pennsylvania for the murder of Andrew Bagby. In 1994, also in Newfoundland, John Cousins murdered Edward Shaw while free on bail, pending his trial for the murder of Marvin Squires. In England in 2007, Garry Weddell murdered his wife Sandra. He was charged with the crime, examined by a psychiatrist, and declared safe for release; that is, he presented no danger to himself or others. The court released him on bail, whereupon he shot and killed his mother-in-law, Traute Maxfield, and then himself.
Four, courts have no means, other than incarceration, to prevent second killings. A piece of paper won't stop a killer. Shirley Turner was ordered to appear in court and agreed to obey that order. She did in fact obey that order many times over the 20 months of the extradition process, but she always had the option to thumb her nose at the court and disappear whenever she felt like it, and to hurt as many people as possible on her way out. The same was true for John Cousins and Garry Weddell.
Five, murder is not just another crime. For every other crime, the primary victim and all the secondary victims--those who care about the primary victim--have at least the potential to recover something like a normal life. Even the victim of a brutal repeated rape or any other kind of vicious assault has an opportunity, with a lot of help from family and friends and maybe professional counsellors, to restore some semblance of normalcy to his or her life. It's not so for a murder victim.
When the last breath is drawn, all negotiations are terminated, all bridges are burned, and there can be no recovery. All is lost. Murder is the only crime that leaves such desolation in its wake.
The general population gets these facts. Here is a quote from University of Ottawa law professor David M. Paciocco:
Many Canadians are losing faith in the criminal justice system. They believe that courts are letting too many people go and are being too soft on those who are punished. It is not too strong to suggest that some of these people are disgusted with what they see.
That is from the first paragraph of the preface of Professor Paciocco's 1999 book, Getting Away with Murder: The Canadian Criminal Justice System. In that book he explains, in layman's terms, why this happens--why some people get away with murder. I found it very helpful and mostly palatable, but Professor Paciocco's elitism shows through on at least one issue.
After carefully explaining why the rule of law is so important in combating arbitrary variations in the delivery of justice, he turns right around and applauds circumventing the rule of law through plea bargaining. In response to the wishes of Canada's voters, Parliament passed a law imposing a sentence of life imprisonment for murder, but Professor Paciocco decries this loss of prosecutorial and judicial discretion, citing cases where prosecutors--and he--considered this sentence to be too harsh.
He applauds the bargaining down of an actual murder to a charge of manslaughter in order to avoid a life sentence for the killer. Apparently the rule of law is a wonderful thing when it works to the advantage of a criminal, but it's okay to sneak around the rule of law when a prosecutor, a professor, or a judge doesn't agree with a particular statute.
I have one more example of elitist disconnect from the real horror of murder. This is from a judicial decision in which Quebec Court of Appeal Justice Jean-Louis Baudouin explained the release of accused murderers on bail. I quote:
...certain inconveniences with respect to effectiveness and the repression of crime [are] the price that must be paid for life in a free and democratic society...
This is an asinine use of the word “inconvenience”. This is in a written judicial decision. Zachary, Edward Shaw, and Traute Maxfield had suffered enormously greater harm than can be described by “inconvenience”. I submit that a case in which an innocent person who is unfortunate enough to appear guilty and is forced to await his or her trial in custody is a much more accurate application of the word “inconvenience”. Once acquitted, the innocent accused has an opportunity to go on with his or her life. It's not so for second victims of actual murderers.
A free and democratic society should be able to minimize the inconvenience to an innocent accused who is held in custody while awaiting trial through liberal visitation and communication rules. But a free and democratic society should also be able to protect its innocent citizens from the actual monsters that arise among us.
You, the Government of Canada, are too late to help Zachary, and I was too late in realizing that I was his only hope. If you leave the bail law as it is, siding with the monsters against the rest of us, eventually someone like me will do the right thing and kill one of these monsters you routinely set free. You will then have to send an innocent person to prison for the crime of protecting himself and his family from a murderer.
Thank you.