B.W.P.--Case Comment--Reason to vote Conservative

B.W.P. is a young aboriginal man. When he was a teenager, he used to carry around a pool ball in a stocking. One day, he killed a guy by bashing his head with this blunt object repeatedly.

To be fair, the other guy sounds like a jerk, and was the one who challenged B.W.P. to the fight.

The guy he killed, from Iraq, had no friends or relatives, and there was no victim impact statement. B.W.P., on the other hand, had an army of helping professionals, family members and hockey coaches to testify at sentencing.

The judge, who called the killing a "misstep", sentenced B.W.P. to one day in open custody (To be super-duper scrupulously fair, he'd already spent 108 days in pre-trial custody.)

Frankly, I can't care whether the Court interpreted the law right. Assume they did. If this is what the Youth Criminal Justice Act means, then it is time to get ourselves a new Youth Criminal Justice Act.

Case Comment of R. v. B.W.P., 2006 SCC 27.