Editorial: LIFE IN PRISON? NOT HERE

PUBLICATION: The Toronto Sun
DATE: 2004.09.24
EDITION: Final
SECTION: Editorial/Opinion
PAGE: 18
COLUMN: Editorial

——————————————————————————–

LIFE IN PRISON? NOT HERE

——————————————————————————–

NOT ONLY do we not put our worst murderers to death in Canada, we don’t even have a true life sentence for them.

The harshest sentence you can get for murdering someone is “life” with no parole, ostensibly, for at least 25 years.

That’s what Jeffrey Breese, now 40, was sentenced to in 1982 after he murdered OPP Const. Rick Hopkins during an armed rampage in Arthur, north of Guelph.

Before the murder, Breese threatened to kill a friend if he didn’t help him rob a store, which he later set on fire. He then wounded a woman when he fired a rifle at passing cars.

After killing Hopkins, who twice ordered him to drop his guns, Breese threatened to shoot another woman if she didn’t give him her car keys, fired at a police roadblock and eventually fled on a stolen horse.

Yesterday, a jury gave Breese a chance to apply for parole in 2006 — 15 months early — under the outrageous “faint-hope” clause, which lets everyone but serial killers apply for a sentencing discount after serving 15 years.

It was his lucky day, yet again. Breese had previously been granted day parole so he could spend more time with his wife, Adele, whom he met behind bars. She is also a first-degree murderer — having helped to kill an an 81-year-old man in 1986. She, too, succeeded in using the faint-hope clause to get out of prison after serving only 15 years of her sentence.

Breese was also granted a two-week stay in a Mount Forest halfway house recently to visit his sick father — the same town where the family of the murdered officer lives. No one bothered to inform them, much less ask their views on this.

The jury heard that Breese was sincerely remorseful, a low risk to re-offend and a model prisoner after a spotty record during his first 10 years of incarceration.

But Crown Attorney Jocelyn Speyer made what to us is the more relevant point — that Breese’s crime “cries out for denunciation and deterrence to the greatest extent possible,” which in this case would simply have meant denying him a chance at parole at least until he’d served the required 25 years — which we think is still far from enough.

The Ontario Police Association argues cop-killers should be barred from “faint hope” applications. We agree.

But the real issue is that not only do we not have the death penalty, we don’t even have a real life sentence in Canada. The faint-hope farce undermines even that weak penalty.

In fact, the only people who get an irrevocable life sentence in our system are the victims and those who love them. And that is the most disturbing reality of all.