By Hilary White
OTTAWA, September 17, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Convicted murderer Robert Latimer has received permission from parole officials to be moved to Victoria, British Columbia to continue serving his life sentence, so that he can continue to receive training as an electrician.
Latimer is currently living in a half-way house in Ottawa, Ontario, the Globe and Mail reports, and has received permission for a six-month extension of his parole and transfer to a minimum security facility near Victoria.
Since moving to Ottawa, the Globe reports, Latimer has worked in a hardware store, shown “favourable” progress with counselling, and been labelled a “low risk to reoffend.” His case made headlines in Canada for years when, in 1993, he killed his 12 year-old daughter Tracy, who suffered from cerebral palsy.
Latimer, who has never expressed remorse for the killing, maintained that he had acted “out of love” and that he had had no choice but to kill his daughter. He became a cause celebre with euthanasia activists who engaged in a media campaign to depict him as a victim of an unjust legal system.
When Tracy’s death was discovered, Robert Latimer at first lied to police, saying that she had died in her sleep. He later confessed to police, who had done an autopsy, that he had killed his daughter by placing her in the cab of his truck and connecting a hose from the cab to the truck’s exhaust pipe. He also confessed to having considered other methods of killing Tracy, including Valium overdose and “shooting her in the head.”
Euthanasia activists insisted that Latimer had acted “out of love” and that Canadian law should be changed to allow lesser sentences for “mercy killing.” The courts, however disagreed. A court convicted Latimer of 2nd degree murder, but the judge sentenced him to only two years, only one of which would be in prison. The Crown appealed and the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal ruled for a life sentence with no parole for ten years. Latimer appealed this, claiming he had had no choice but to murder Tracy. The Supreme Court of Canada, however, upheld the Appeals court ruling.
Part of Latimer’s parole conditions are that he must never be allowed to be a primary caregiver for a disabled person.