Robert Latimer Released on Day Parole

The Appeal Division of the National Parole Board today overturned a Board panel's decision to deny Robert Latimer day parole. Latimer, who has served seven years of a life sentence for the murder of his severely disabled daughter, will soon be released to a half-way house.

In essence, the Board had denied parole because Latimer remains convinced that he did the right thing and thus "lacked insight" into his crime. The Appeal Division rightly found that the Board's decision was "unreasonable and unsupported" and that there was no evidence that Latimer represented an "undue risk to society," which is the only basis for denying parole.

Whatever one thinks of the legitimacy of Latimer's conviction and sentence, he should not have been denied release solely because he believed his actions were moral and justified. The state has no right to compel us to think "correctly," only to take reasonable measures to ensure that our beliefs do not manifest themselves as harmful behaviour. This is the appropriate line between (illegitmate) paternalism and (legitimate) self-protection. It is also (among other things) what distinguishes authoritarian from liberal societies. Given the miniscule risk that Latimer would find himself in a similar position in the future (and his otherwise law abiding record) the fact that he would have made the same decision in retrospect does not justifiy his punishment.

For commentary from this site on the initial Board decision, see here.

Comments

[David Cheifetz]

Perhaps the Appeal Board read and took to heart the comments made, here,

http://ualbertalaw.typepad.com/faculty/2007/12/robert-latimer.html

As I said, then, Mr. Latimer's problem was that, in Alice's Restaurant terms, he hadn't rehabilitated himself enough to be allowed to have day parole with the folks that Arlo got to sit with on the Group W bench. And, of course, Karla.

Or, more to the point, he wasn't prepared to be dishonest and to claim he was, so the functionaries could play their roles they way they wanted to play them. So, when he sat down with the 2 bureaucrats and the retired police officer and told them, in so many words, that they were more out of touch with reality than, say, Pangloss ....

[Jonathan]

As the poster pointed out, the only real reason for taking remorse as a factor in a parole decision is if there is some risk of re-offending. If someone thinks random stabbings are morally justified, as many apppear to think in this town, I can see why a board may not want to release that person into society.

But when the risk of re-offending is virtually nil, as is here, it becomes an issue of state coercion, as Prof. Penney pointed out.

Locke once said that men have never laid “down quietly under the oppression and submitted their backs to the blows of others, when they thought they had strength enough to defend themselves." I commend Latimer for showing the same resolve, rather than to violate his individual integrity to the thought police.