Quote:
Originally Posted by Frequitude
To MBates and other defense lawyers,
Could you shed some light on lower sentences for convicted murderers? Why are they right and how do you justify trying for those when the client is in fact a murderer?
A lot of the talk defending defense lawyers in this thread has centered around the two extremes (ensuring a clearly guilty person who got the max punishment is given a fair unappealable trial like Garland, and ensuring an innocent person doesn't get convicted like Milgaard). However my speculation is that the animosity from some in this thread is coming from those who had someone close to them murdered where the accused got off with a perceived light punishment (e.g. the referenced 5 years).
|
Your question is mixing things up a bit. The reference to a 'murderer' getting out after serving only 5 years is that poster believing the accused committed murder and it was therefore unjust that he was only convicted of manslaughter.
In Canada, there's no such thing as a convicted murderer serving less than 10 years in jail. And the actual mandatory sentence for murder is a life sentence.
So, once convicted of murder a person in Canada will never spend another second of their life not serving their sentence. If they are not in jail they are on parole with whatever conditions are deemed appropriate. Get suspected of a breach and you are just immediately put in jail again (pending a hearing within 90 days to see if you actually did anything wrong). There's no trial and very little procedural fairness for parole breach allegations.
The numbers quoted on murder sentences are for parole eligibility meaning simply how long before a person can even ask to get paroled. Second degree murder is minimum 10. First degree is minimum 25. Very few convicted murderers will actually get parole when they are first eligible to apply.
The rationale for arguing for a lower parole eligibility in most cases is that we cannot predict how worthy a person might be for parole consideration more than a decade down the road. Since we cannot predict the future, it is best to leave those assessments to be made by the corrections officials and parole board at the time. A convict therefore has some motivation to not be useless during the 10 years they must be inside.
This case speaks to the issues somewhat:
https://www.canlii.org/en/ab/abca/do...?resultIndex=1