Conference kaosws::canada

    As long as there are lawyers then the guilty will always have a chance
    at being found not guilty.
    
    Think about this: the law says that you are innocent until proven
    guilty.
    
    But is it not true that in your every day dealings with strangers one
    regards them as a potential threat until it is proved otherwise?
    
    In other words the law says, "take a stranger home with you no
    questions asked because this person is presumed innocent."
    
    I say "before I bring a person home with me I want to know that they
    are not going to harm me."
    
    The only people who benefit from this skewed logic is lawyers, not
    victims not criminals just lawyers.
    
    chris
    

    Well I'd be inclined to agree with you if it wasn't for Guy Paul Morin,
    ten years ago many people felt the same way about him as they do about
    Bernardo today, obviously the evidence against Bernardo is indisputable
    and that against Morin, as we now know was not but had the law not made
    provision for appeal an innocent man would still be in jail. Now we see
    how well the appeals system works, these things are not automatic, as
    much as Mr. Rosen might want to pursue an appeal he must produce legal
    grounds to do so and right now I can't see it. Morin's lawyers had to
    fight very hard for the appeals they got and the evidence there was a
    sham, it's unlikely that Bernardo will get any appeals any time soon. 

    >> How do you feel about having paid $1 million so far for his trial
    and it's continuting <<
    
    If the Crown accused me of something, I'd want them to pay for my
    lawyers, too.

    
    re. -2
    
     "Also heard...
    
            ...he's appealing. "
    
    
     I personally don't find him appealing at all, but I understand
    all the groupies hanging around the courtroom every day do..... :-)
    
    

    Could someone enlighten me on the particulars of the case you are
    discussing??  I have not heard of these people (Paul Bernardo &
    Karla??).  What is it they have done??  25 to life seems tame for a
    first degree case.  Thank you
    
    					Andre

To put it simply:

Victim 1 Kristen French (15 years old):

	Forceful confinement (2 weeks or so), rape (all on video), sex slave,
	first degree murder, gross indecency to a human body, and all that 
	can possibly come to mind along those lines, by both Paul Bernardo 
	and Karla Homolka.  Body then cut up, encased in cement, and dumped
	in Gibson lake near Welland Ontario.

Victim 2 Leslie Mohaffy (15 yeard old):

	Much the same as above.  Body wrapped in carpet and dumped in a
	garbage dump site near St-Catherines.

Other victims, Jane Doe (fictitious name), rape, etc... she's still alive and OK.

Karla Homolka's sister Tammy, drugged and raped unconscious by both Paul and
Karla, then dies of choking on her own vomit, on X-mas eve about 5-6 years ago.

More accusations coming later apparently.

You get the picture.

/Mario

    
    Does Canada has death sentence?

    No we do not.

    Re: .6
    
    Close enough for government work. Got the names in the wrong order,
    moved Gibson lake a couple miles and got the location of the
    construction site wrong. 
    
    Bernardo is also accused of a long stretch of serial rapes for which he
    has yet to stand trial. 
    
    Re: .7
    
    Most Canadians will be suprised to discover that the answer to this
    question is yes. The death penalty was removed from the criminal code
    in 1976, however it is still on the books for some offenses that are
    outside the criminal code, primailry under the juristiction of the
    Military courts, high treason for example. 
    
    Canada also does not have consecutive sentencing, he is under several
    sentances, to be served concurrently, the longest of which is life with
    no parole for at least 25 years. It's unlikely he would ever recieve
    parole, contary to popular belief parole is not automatic and 2 out of
    every three prisoners who apply for parole are denied. There are also
    other avenues that can keep him in prison, if declared a dangerous
    offender he would lose any parole eligability and although it's seldom
    used there is a provision in law for a Govenor General's order to be
    used to keep such a person where they belong.
    
                                         
    The other case mentioned here is that of Guy Paul Morin, 11 years ago a
    9 year old girl was kidnapped, raped and killed in a small town called
    Queensville. Because it was in what was percieved to be an 'idyllic'
    environment the crime got a lot of media attention and the local police
    were under a lot of pressure to make an arrest. They eventually settled
    on the next door neighbour, mainly because the girls mother took a
    dislike to him and insisted he was the killer. There was no real
    evidence and during the trial it was revealed that the girls older
    brother and his friends had repeatedly raped her over an extended
    period leading up to the killing yet the neighbour was convicted and
    sent up for 25 to life. After three trials and ten years in prison
    the crown was preparing to defend against a parlimentary review of the 
    case (morin had exhausted his appeals and his only hope was to convince the
    parliment to overturn his sentence, there have been several recent
    cases where this has happened) when they tested some of the evidenence
    for DNA match to Morin and oops, guess what kids it wasn't him after
    all. Canadians already have the blood of one now known innocent man
    hung for murder on our hands and I for one am glad there is no risk of 
    that repeating itself. For every Clifford Olson and Paul Bernardo there
    is a Guy Paul Morin or Donald Marshall.
     

    
    .9
    
    Note that Section 717 of the Criminal Code *does* allow for consecutive
    sentencing; however, it is rarely used in Canada, and he would still be
    *eligible* for parole after 25 years, even if he was sentenced to 175
    years (which is what he could conceivably receive for the 9 crimes he was
    recently convicted of).
    

    And she only received two years!!!!  I'm amazed they both did not
    receive life without possiblity of parole.  This must be the case that
    the Canadian government/legal system kept under wraps during the trial.
    Well better that then the type of publicity that the O.J. Simpson trail
    is famous for.  Is all the information on the Bernardo case now
    available to the public??  What has your media produce at this point?
    Interesting differences between the two trials.
    Andre

Karla got 12 years in return for plea-barganing of guilty and with the condition
that she testify against Paul when his trial came up.

Her trial was 2 years ago and it's details were not revealed until Paul's
trial.  The internet was useful in getting some info though during that time.

Although she will be eligible for parole after 4 years (2 years from now), I
also doubt that it will be granted.

One good thing in comparison to the O.J.trial, trials in Canada cannot be
televised for everyone to see and scrutinize.  The O.J. trial has become
a farce in my view and is dragging on way too long.

/Mario

    Mario,
    	I agree.  The O.J. trial has become a farce.  I believe they should
    record the trial first and, after sentencing, if they really must view
    this then it can be made public.  The circus that was once a trial
    should point that out.  The recorded trial could serve to preserve
    testimony as well as evidence for the future.  Strangely I find myself
    against the death penalty but feel life in prison for some hideous
    crime should mean life in prison.........period.
    
    		Feels good to vent.          Andre
    

    
    
    Karla could be out in two years, she'll have a university degree
    from Queens paid for by you & me. A lot of ordinary folks can't
    even afford to go to Queens. Although this wouldn't make a lot
    of sense, what does nowadays anyway?
    
    The Ontario goverment is apparently going to review her plea bargain.
    But they'll probably come up with the classic "unfortunetely there's
    nothing we can do about it, the charter of rights provisions prohibit
    us from being intelligent at this time" & there she'll go, maybe write
    a book even though her present plea bargain prohibits her from doing
    so. She'll find some kind of loop hole to crawl through.
    
    Killing people seems to be a lucrative business in this country. 
    Didn't Clifford Olsen get something like $100,000.00 for revealing
    the whereabouts of the young people he killed. Was justice served
    by this? Did this bring those people back from the grave. What
    kind of lame minds our handling our justice system. 
    
      
    Aren't we in society, just as guilty of letting the present  
    justice system carry on the way it does. Shouldn't we pressure our 
    goverments to re-instate the death penalty & most importantly,
    to use it expediently when evidence is irrefutable as was in
    this case.
     
    Canada's justice system, just a slighter shade of pale compared
    to our neighbors to the south's "Night Court" style of justice.
    Maybe it's time to take the blindfold off of the statue's eyes.  
    
    Nick Battersby's killer got 5 years. For those who don't remember who
    Nick was, he was a 27 year old engineer hand picked by BNR to work
    in their Bells Corners, Ontario research location. He was writing his
    second book on electronics.
    
    He was walking down Elgin street in Ottawa in the early evening when
    a bunch of yahoos drove by and gunned him down in a random shooting
    incident. Five years! The police detective said it could have been
    anybody, unfortunately these kids killed a somebody. 
    
     
    What K. Homolka & P. Bernado did was well beyond committing a crime.
    In their acts, they have desecrated every human value we hold as a
    society and for this they should be put to death. Anything short of
    that condemns us to being as barbaric as the killers we breed.
    
    The whole plea bargain system needs to be re-evaluated & re-designed.
    The privilege of parole should be earned and granted to people who
    can truly be rehabilitated. I don't think Holmoka or Bernado fit that
    script.
    
                                       my $0.02 worth...
    
                                         Regards J.P.