From the BBC:
“Quebec City
mosque shooter: Canada court reduces sentence”
A Canadian
court has reduced the sentence of the man behind a 2017 shooting at a Quebec
City mosque. Alexandre Bissonnette was sentenced to two consecutive life
sentences last year for killing six people and seriously injuring five others. Quebec's
highest court struck down the consecutive sentences, calling it "cruel and
unusual". The appeal court's ruling means he will be eligible for parole
in 25 years, instead of 40. Bissonnette turns 31 this week. In January 2017, he
stormed into the Quebec Islamic Cultural Centre and shot at those gathered for
prayers. The attack shook the nation, and raised questions about Islamophobia
in Quebec as well as in other parts of the country. He pleaded guilty to the
attack. "I am ashamed of what I did," Bissonnette told a Quebec
courtroom at the time. "I am not a terrorist, I am not an
Islamophobe." In Canada, a life sentence allows for parole eligibility
after 25 years.
In 2011, the
law was amended to allow judges to impose consecutive sentences instead of
concurrent, for multiple murders. That means that judges could extend the
period before parole eligibility beyond 25 years. Consecutive sentences have
only been applied a handful of times in Canada since the law was amended,
including a judge handing down a 75-year prison sentence for a man who pleaded
guilty to killing three police officers in 2014. Thursday's ruling could have
widespread repercussions. In a unanimous and sharply written decision, the
Quebec court found they violated the country's Charter of Rights and Freedoms,
specifically the sections that protect the life and security of a person and
against "cruel and unusual" punishment. The justices wrote that the
possibility of sentencing someone to a prison term longer than their life span
was "absurd." "This nonsense cannot survive and constitutes, in
itself, cruel and unusual punishment, degrading because of its absurd
nature," they wrote. The ruling only has jurisdiction in Quebec, but if it
were to be appealed and go to the country's supreme court, the sentencing issue
could find a national stage.
^ If a country
(like Canada) refuses to have the Death Penalty then the least they can offer
people who kills, are terrorists or are terrorists who kill is a Life Sentence
that ends when the killer/terrorist dies in prison. If the person or people
they killed are not brought back to life in 25 years then why are the murderers
allowed out in 25 years? Canada doesn’t seem to take life and death very
seriously and cares only for the killers and not the victims or their families.
^
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