Smith, 25 at the time, was sentenced to die by lethal injection for the 1982 murders of two Native American men in Montana. He has been backed for nearly 25 years by Canada in his bid to be spared execution.
But the federal Department of Foreign Affairs -- responding late Wednesday to CanWest News Service requests about the current position on the Smith case -- revealed that Day has abruptly changed the long-standing policy automatically seeking clemency for Canadians on death row.
"We are not going to seek clemency in cases in democratic countries, like the United States, where there has been a fair trial," says the new policy, issued just days after the government had reiterated Canada's traditional opposition to the death penalty.
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http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=08963b7a-a381-41b1-8667-8dbd4467decd&k=65425
Note: http://www.canada.com/t...
Ottawa Won't Fight For Life Of Canadian On Death Row
Posted on Friday, November 02 at 11:41 by N SayContributed By
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"When Smith was asked at his trial, why he killed those 2 Indians, he said he wanted to see what it felt like to kill someone."<br />
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"Smith himself requested the death penalty after pleading guilty to two counts of murder and two counts of aggravated kidnapping. He later sought a life sentence and has since exhausted nearly all of his appeals."<br />
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<a href="http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/071101/national/death_penalty_tories&printer=1">http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/071101/national/death_penalty_tories&printer=1</a><br />
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Let's waste no more time on him. Canada does not have a death penalty, but other countries do. This man had a fair trial, and pled GUILTY. That has consequences.<p>---<br>The preceding comment deals with mature subject matter, however immaturely presented. Viewer discretion is advised.<br />
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"George Bush has declared the war on terrorism to be the cause of his generation. The cause of Canadian sovereignty will be ours." - John Godfrey, MP for Don Va
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Dave Ruston
rather than who we are and where we are going the more people will agree
with war and death as an option for our own person success.
Killing someone because they have killed is not a solution, that's like taking a
poison and burying it in a landfill thinking we're safe from its
effects, yet not foresee that down the road it's going to reappear in our
drinking water, our air or our food. This is no different than the "war on
terror" really. One needs to get to the root of our social problems rather than
"killing" them as they reappear.
And, how is killing anyone making US better people? I don't know, isn't that
what we all are aiming for here?
If we do not agree with the death penalty then we need to stand up for our
beliefs everywhere and support only those people into our governments that
support who we are and want to be.
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"The most sustainable product is the one you never bought in the first place."
Alex Steffan
Uh, it doesn't follow that simply because many Conservatives support capital punishment, it's therefore wrong for the Conservative government to stop interfering in the justice system of another sovereign democratic country. Judge the policy on its own merits, not simply on your opinion of what the motivations of the government are.
This whole "hidden agenda" stuff is getting really tiresome. Pierre Trudeau's agenda was to take Canada as far left as he could get away with and still get his party re-elected. He took advantage of any excuse he could find (such as being in a minority government propped up by New Democrats) to push our society further in a social democratic direction.
Harper is doing the same thing, only in a rightward direction. And he is working within the same constraints Trudeau did - electability. The central tendency of Canadian public opinion serves to keep any politician who wants to be Prime Minister of Canada within a certain ideological box. Even if Harper gets a majority government, he is not going to do anything that will be sure to cost him the following election.
I've very torn on the idea of capital punishment for premeditated murder. I believe it is a more just sentence than life imprisonment. But I also recognize that an execution of a wrongly convicted person cannot be undone. But this isn't a debate about reinstating capital punishment in Canada. There's no slippery slope here.