By Arthur Weinreb
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Many Canadians are up in arms over the plea bargain that was reached between sexual predator Peter Whitmore and prosecutors in Saskatchewan. This is nothing more than a knee jerk reaction to the agreement that will likely have no effect on when Whitmore is released from custody if in fact he is ever released.
Whitmore, 36, has been in and out of jail since 1993 for committing serious sexual offences against children. Why he had so many "outs" is a different matter. Upon release he has always reoffended relatively quickly and by his own admission, he cannot control is pedophilic sexual impulses. His last crimes involved kidnapping two boys, aged 10 and 14 and turning them into sexual slaves. Whitmore held them hostage and during the stand-off with police, the police promised to recommend to the prosecutors that dangerous offender proceedings not commenced against him. The hostage taking ended with no further harm coming to his young captives or anyone else.
Promises that are made by police do not bind prosecutors, and in fairness to the officers they only promised to recommend not initiating dangerous offender proceedings. Yesterday in a Saskatchewan courtroom, a plea agreement that had been made with Peter Whitmore was carried out. In exchange for not proceeding against him as a dangerous offender, Whitmore pleaded guilty to offences that arose out of the latest incidents and agreed to a sentence of life imprisonment, with no possibility of parole before 7 years, the minimum parole period for a person serving a life sentence.
There is no rational reason why anyone should be upset by this agreement. The upside is that the two young victims will not be forced to testify and be subjected to reliving the events in public and a potentially grueling cross examination.
Contrary to the perception that many people have, a life sentence means life; not 25 years or some other definite amount of time. Much like airplanes that travel halfway around the world and land without incident, we never hear of those who do in fact serve a life sentence and die of natural causes in a prison hospital. We only pay attention to the release on parole of high profile lifers such as Colin Thatcher or those who are released on parole and commit further serious criminal offences.
There is also a tendency to think it terms of generalities rather than specifics. Conrad Black is a perfect example of this. A lot of general reasons were given why Black posed a flight risk was raised by both the prosecution and the media that justified putting him in custody pending his sentencing. He had a lot of money, a lot of smarts and contacts and residences in various other countries. He was obviously more of a threat to flee than a paraplegic welfare recipient who lived two blocks from the courthouse. But when it came to the specifics; why Conrad Black needed to be detained pending sentencing, the best argument the prosecutors had was that he showed disdain for the court proceedings. Criminal defendants have to comply with the proceedings; they don't have to like it. The only thing that separated Lord Black from others facing the judicial system was that no one else can turn a phrase like Conrad can. When it came down to specifics, there was no valid reason to detain him before the matters were completed and he was released.
It is true that about 33 percent of those doing life make parole the first time they are eligible to apply compared to only 1.4 percent of those that have been declared to be dangerous offenders. But dangerous offenders are also eligible for parole in 7 years. When the specifics of Whitmore's case are examined it is likely that he will not get out any earlier as a lifer than he would if he were found to be a dangerous offender. If he sees daylight at all, it will be when he's too old or sick to commit further sexual offences and this will be possible no matter how he was sentenced.
Another fact that must be considered is that Peter Whitmore never killed anybody. Unless someone has blind faith in the Canadian justice system, dangerous offender proceedings against him can hardly be considered a slam dunk. The prosecution made a good trade-off; a life sentence in exchange for not subjecting two young boys to testifying in what was far from a certainty.
It is not the purpose of the criminal justice system to make everybody happy. That could never be achieved in any event. Whitmore undoubtedly would have preferred a definite sentence less than life so that he would know the date past which he could not be held. And everyone else would have preferred if he had been declared a dangerous offender.
Now everyone is unhappy; and that's the closest thing to justice that we can achieve.
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