Were six convictions of second degree murder satisfactory?

On December 10, 2007, a jury in New Westminster, British Columbia branded Robert Pickton, a 58-year-old as a second-degree serial murderer, but rejected the government's contention that he planned and intentionally killed six women whose partial remains were found on his farm. For Pickton, the verdict of second-degree murder for all six victims could mean 15 extra years of freedom.

Canadian law allows two grades of culpability in a murder case: first and second degree. Both draw a life sentence in which the convicted murderer could be sentenced to as much as twenty-five years in prison before he becomes eligible to apply for parole. Pickton has in the meantime being in custody for six years and that may later be taken into consideration after he was sentenced on December 11th. The key distinction, in terms of the punishment, is how soon the killer is eligible for release on parole.

So in effect, Pickton, having being found guilty on December 10th of six counts of second-degree murder, could have had his parole eligibility set as much as 15 years earlier than if the jury had returned a first-degree verdict; or alternatively, it could be set the same period of imprisonment; at 25 years.

How the jury arrived at the verdict, which drew disappointment from some of the victim's families and police investigators and sparked questions of its logical probability, will remain a mystery because it is illegal in Canada for jury members to discuss privately or publicly how they arrived at their verdict.

Evidence surfaced at the trial that DNA and body parts of the six victims (and 20 other female victims) were found in various parts of his farm and even some were found in the trailer in which he lived. That evidence certainly ties Pickton to the murders of these women but does it conclusively mean that he personally killed the women or planned their murders or that he raped the women and then killed them to prevent them from testifying against him?

He may have been convicted of first degree murder had the jury believed the testimony of one of the witnesses who testified that she walked into the barn and saw Pickton butchering one of the women and heard him say that she would be next if she told anyone what she saw. The jury completely disregarded that witness’ testimony.

We are forced to ask ourselves this rhetorical question; ‘How can a man murder six women on six separate occasions -- disposing of their bodies like swine in a slaughterhouse – confessing that he was the killer to a planted undercover agent without planning to commit the most repulsive crimes imaginable?’

Jeffrey Dahmer, the Milwaukee cannibal who kept heads, skulls and body parts in his apartment was convicted of first-degree murder. On July 22, 1991, Jeffrey Dahmer lured a young man, (Tracy Edwards) into his home. According to the would-be victim, Dahmer struggled with Edwards in order to handcuff him. Edwards escaped and alerted a police car, with the handcuffs still hanging from one hand. Edwards led police back to Dahmer's apartment, where Dahmer at first acted friendly to the officers, only to turn on them when he realized that they suspected something was wrong. As one officer subdued Dahmer, the other searched the house and uncovered multiple photographs of murdered victims and human remains, including three severed heads. A further search of the house revealed more evidence, including human remains in his refrigerator.

Being in possession of body parts may not have been sufficient to prove that he killed them but the testimony of the police that one victim actually pleaded with the police to free him from Dahmer and later turned up dead and the testimony of Tracy Edwards that Dahmer was trying to kill him was sufficient to prove that he planned the murders of his victims. Hence he was convicted of first degree murder at his trial. Had the jury refused to accept the evidence of the police and Edwards, the jury may have been compelled to convict him of second degree murder only.

They may have convicted Pickton of first degree murder if the judge hadn’t ordered that certain evidence was not to be presented to the jury. For example, when he was being questioned by the police, he said that the police were "making me out to be more of a mass murderer than I am." That information was kept from the jurors.
If it wasn’t established that Pickton had planned the murder of the victims, it was certainly established that he disposed of the bodies of the victims and that by itself would justify convicting him of murder in the second degree since he would be a party to a cover-up. If only one person was murdered by someone else and he disposed of the body, that may not have been enough to convict him of second degree murder but disposing of six bodies (and another 20 bodies) over a period of time would make him complicit with whomever murdered the women.

Every accused person is entitled to the benefit of reasonable doubt and all it takes is for one member of the jury to have reasonable doubt and if that happens, there is a mistrial and then the entire trial process has to begin again. Since it has already cost the public millions of dollars to conduct the 10-month trial, that prospect surely wasn’t a satisfactory option for the jury to accept.

The jury could conclude that since there was no doubt in their minds that Pickton had disposed of the bodies of the victims and that his cover-up of the murders would make him a party to the murders. such a verdict could result in Pickton being sentenced to a minimum of 25 years in prison before he could apply for parole. That must have been in the juror’s minds when they reached their verdict; and in my opinion, an acceptable verdict.

The trouble with the verdict however is that it has put Pickton into a grey area in terms of the law because it doesn't go so far as a first-degree conviction, which would have ensured that the system would automatically treat him like a serial killer. Instead, the second-degree verdict could be interpreted to mean that he was not an active participant in causing the deaths but was to some degree, an assistant to the person or persons who committed the murders because of his attempt at covering up the crimes by disposing of the bodies of the murdered women.

Peter Ritchie, Pickton's lead defence lawyer, however, saw the verdict as a rejection of an important part of the Crown's case. He said to reporters after the verdict was given, "I don't know what the jury thought; except that the Crown didn't prove that these murders were planned and deliberate."

Personally, I believe that he really killed the women and I strongly suspect that the members of the jury also had the same belief but they knew that having that belief doesn’t necessarily mean that they could legally convict him of actually having killed the women.

B.C. Supreme Court Justice James Williams asked members of the jury if they had a recommendation on Pickton's parole date but, after deliberations, they offered no guidance. I am surprised that they chose not to suggest an eligibility date considering the evidence they heard and saw about the gruesome body parts found on Pickton’s farm.

Justice James Williams slammed Robert Pickton with the maximum sentence on December 11, 2007, giving him life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. However, he may be given credit for the six years he was in custody prior to the final outcome of his trial.

He is currently 58 years old so it is possible (although highly unlikely) that he could be released when he is 77 years of age.

Those convicted of a single murder -- in the first or second degree -- are allowed to apply to have their parole eligibility date reduced after serving 15 years. Serial killers are not accorded that courtesy. Since Pickton isn’t a convicted serial killer, that option is open to him but it is highly unlikely that a second jury hearing his application 15 years from now for an early release will grant it.

Inmates incarcerated for second-degree murder become eligible for consideration for unescorted temporary absences and day parole three years before their full parole eligibility date. An offender may apply for escorted temporary absences anytime after admission to a federal institution. That won’t happen in Pickton’s case. Without a grant of parole, Pickton could remain imprisoned for the rest of his natural life. The chances that any member of the National Parole Board would ever stick his or her neck out by suggesting that someday in the future, Pickton should be released from prison is zero to nothing.

According to statistics, 19% of Canada's 21,620 inmates are serving sentences for murder. Most murder convictions are for second degree -- 78% in 2002, according to the parole board. Other types of criminal killings in Canada's Criminal Code include manslaughter, which is a culpable homicide that is not murder, and infanticide, which is the killing of a newly-born child by its disturbed mother.

There is no point in having Pickton declared a dangerous offender since he has been convicted of six counts of second degree murder. It makes a second trial with respect to the six victims he is convicted of murdering to determine as to whether or not he is a dangerous offender, rather pointless.

At the time of this writing, he is facing the possibility of another trial in which is he charged with the first degree murders of another twenty women. The government will have to seriously consider whether or not it wants to spend millions of more dollars conducting that trial since Pickton is already in prison serving a life sentence with little or no likelihood of ever being released from prison.

If the government does go ahead with the second trial, (which is scheduled to begin in January 2008) it will probably be for the main purpose of brining justice to the families of those twenty murdered women and hopefully getting him convicted of first degree murder.

That would raise an interesting legal question. Is it possible that a man can be convicted of both second and first degree murder when the circumstances of the murders are identical?

Fortunately, he didn’t commit the murders in Ecuador. He would have been released after serving only sixteen years of imprisonment. In 1980, when I was addressing a UN crime conference in Caracas, Venezuela, I brought to the attention of the delegates the particulars of the crime, arrest and conviction of a serial killer named Pedro Alonso López (born 8 October 1948) He confessed to murdering 300 girls. He was arrested in 1980 and was sentenced to the maximum 16 year sentence for murder which was to be served concurrently, not consecutively. He was freed after serving only 14 years in prison by the government of Ecuador in 1994 and deported to Colombia. In an interview from his prison cell, Lopez described himself as "the man of the century" and said he was being released for "good behaviour". In Colombia, he was tried for a two-decade old murder, but escaped punishment by claiming insanity. In 1998 he was declared sane and released. That horrendous serial killer is free. To date, no one is aware if he has killed again.

There was a case in Canada (the name of the murderer escapes me) who was convicted of murdering two small children. He was sentenced to hang. His sentence was commuted to life in prison and years later he was released from prison. Years later, he murdered two more children and he was sentenced to life in prison. He was later murdered by the inmates.

It would have been better if Pickton had been convicted and sentenced in the United States. His six convictions would have meant that he would have to serve six life sentences, one after the other.

Years ago, an American who murdered three people was sentenced to a thousand years for each murder and the sentences were to be served consecutively, not concurrently like in Canada. The man appealed his 3000-year sentence saying that it was ridiculous. The appeal court agreed with him and subsequently reduced his sentence to 1500 years instead. The court said that it was the intention of the trial judge that the man never be released and the appeal court was in agreement with that concept also.