OTTAWA, May 5 (Lifesitenews.com) – The Supreme Court of Canada will likely announce tomorrow that it will hear Robert Latimer’s appeal of his “mercy-killing” conviction and sentence. Crown prosecutors are backing portions of the appeal saying that the controversy over constitutional exemptions from sentences needs to be addressed by the highest court since it is “a question of national importance.”
Recalling last November’s announcement by Justice Minister Anne McLellan that the federal government would likely intervene if the Latimer case was heard by the Supreme Court of Canada, pro-life leaders are worried. At the time McLellan would not divulge the position the government would take on the issue. She informed the press that that information would not be made public until the court decides on hearing the case. Jim Hughes, national president of Campaign Life Coalition called the circumstances “ominous,” and said he suspects the government may intervene on Latimer’s behalf.
Besides the fact that the ruling Liberal party is officially pro-assisted suicide, (At its policy convention in the fall of 1996, the Liberals voted in favour of legalizing doctor-assisted suicide) “we must remember that the Justice Minister has chosen for her executive assistant Georgette Sheridan, the wife of a Saskatoon abortionist,” said Hughes. “Birds of a feather stick together.”
Latimer is a Saskatchewan resident used his car as a makeshift gas chamber to kill his 12-year-old disabled daughter Tracy in 1993. After being convicted of second-degree murder the verdict was scrapped for a new trial due to a technicality. The Canada Family Action Coalition noted that “Latimer was once convicted in Saskatchewan as an accessory to the rape of a 13 year-old girl, but later, on appeal to a higher court, his conviction was thrown out on a technicality.”
In the second trial on the killing of his daughter, Latimer was again found guilty of murder but the judge allowed a constitutional exemption from the mandatory 10-year minimum sentence giving him only 2 years, half of which could be served at home. The sentencing ruling was appealed and the constitutional exemption was revoked. Latimer has been free on bail pending the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case.