Alexandre Bissonnette has just been granted a new chance, a “second life”, which the six victims he killed will never have.
• Read also: Bissonnette may apply for parole after 25 years
• Read also: The Muslim community disappointed and worried about orphans
This is always what is most trying, when we learn that an assassin will see his sentence or his conditions reduced. In this case, Bissonnette will be able to apply for parole after 25 years, instead of 40.
We think of the victims, of the pain and the harm they still have to endure. We would like “justice to be done”, and this is all the more true for loved ones.
During the sentencing by Judge François Huot, which I attended in 2019, the so real account of the events was blood-curdling.
For the victims of this killer, to which are added 17 orphans of fathers, it is no longer possible to do anything.
If we could…
rehabilitate
It becomes instinctive, when such horror occurs, to wish to see the author of these inadmissible and inhuman gestures rot in prison for eternity. And even more.
Against the death penalty, I found myself thinking, after listening to a documentary on the American serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who claimed 33 victims: “Fortunately the death penalty existed in such a case. ..»
In Canada, the death penalty was completely abolished in 1998, and it has not been used for 60 years. This is a good thing, when you take into account the fact that a single miscarriage of justice in this matter cannot be tolerated, and that you are never safe.
There is also in the Canadian constitution a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, provisions of which protect every citizen against “cruel and unusual” punishment, the Supreme Court ruled in the decision on Bissonnette.
The nation’s highest court has ruled that the consecutive sentences introduced into the Criminal Code in 2011 by the Conservatives were unconstitutional. “The horror of crimes does not negate the fundamental proposition that all humans carry within them the capacity to rehabilitate themselves.”
Cold water shower
The Muslim community welcomed the decision as a shower of cold water. For the co-founder of the Islamic Cultural Center of Quebec, where the killing took place in 2017, the suffering of the relatives of the victims did not weigh enough in the balance. The court did not take into account, according to him, the humanity that families possess.
The decision, the Court writes, “should not be seen as a devaluation of the lives of each of the innocent victims.” However, this is the perception we all too often have when faced with court decisions: the victims seem less important than the accused.
Admittedly, Bissonnette will not obtain an automatic release, after 25 years, far from it. If he could make the request, and managed to convince the Commission responsible for making the decisions, he would be watched.
But here too, we have seen criminals released who have committed crimes again, even going so far as to kill again. Let us think of the murderer of Marylène Lévesque, in Quebec, in 2020.
Without falling into anger or an unhealthy spirit of revenge, it is certainly permissible to be disappointed. Once again, my thoughts are with the victims and their families. I wish them to find the courage to turn the page.