Should young offenders who murder their parents serve only two years in prison?

Two Toronto sisters, dubbed the "Bathtub Girls" by the media during their infamous trial in 2005, were convicted of first-degree murder in their planned and deliberate bathtub drowning of their 43-year-old alcoholic mother two years earlier. They were the first sisters to ever murder their mother in Canada. They were just 16 and 15 when they committed the deadly crime. The Bathtub Girls very nearly got away with murder the first time. Now, if a judge agrees to their request to have them released to a halfway house after only serving two years in prison, they might very well be getting away with it for real this time. Under the terms of her and her sister's sentencing, they can only spend a maximum of six years behind bars with the remainder
of their sentence under a form of community supervision such as a halfway house.

In a few days, the older sister, now 21, will learn whether she will receive her "get out of jail free" card from Ontario Justice Bruce Duncan. And her 20-year-old sister is in the midst of proceedings asking for the same.

On January 18, 2003, the two Mississauga siblings ----- 16 and 15 at the time ----- set about their evil plan to rid themselves of their alcoholic mom. While nonchalantly chatting about their plot online with some pals, they plied her with vodka and Tylenol 3s of which everyone knows, is laced with codeine. Then the older girl put on gloves and held her mom's head under the bathwater for four long minutes. This is how the older sister coolly related drowning her mom to a friend secretly taping her for the police. "Only four minutes….. that's how long I held her head under the water for. After that, she just kept convulsing and twisting in the water. All I had to do was hold her head under water ... It's a lot easier to kill a person than you think.”

The girls then went to celebrate with their friends at the nearby Jack Astor's. The girls, now flush with $133,000 in insurance money, couldn't stop talking about what they had done. The oldest certainly seemed to love the notoriety that came with her crime and arrest. During the trial, she posted nude photos of herself online and boasted of being arrested for murder.

The two defendants set out to commit the perfect crime but instead they created the perfect prosecution by bragging to their friends what they had done to their mother. They were both found guilty of first-degree murder in the 2005 judge-only trial. Each of these two evil girls received a 10-year sentence ----- six years in jail and the remaining four under conditional supervision in the community. Unfortunately, this is the law in Canada when it applies to young offenders.

Both are currently 21 and 20 years of age and are inmates at the federal woman’s prison, their names protected forever by the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

Recently, the murderous duo both applied to be transferred to halfway houses from the segregated maximum security wing to the general population medium security area in the Grand Valley Institution, a women's federal prison in Kitchener after serving just two years of the six years the law said that they could be incarcerated.

The oldest one attended the court of Justice Duncan when she appeared at a hearing in February. She whined, "Prison is a harsh place to live." Surely she must have arrived at that conclusion even before she murdered her mother.

Her lawyer, Stephen Gehl said to the judge about his client, “She has demonstrated in connection with her rehabilitation a true commitment and a genuine remorse for what she did.” He added, “She wants to get on with her life and deal with the emotional scars of murdering her mother.”

Come on. Give me a break! Do you really believe that a 16-year-old girl who slowly drowns her own mother in a bathtub and brags about it to her friends is genuinely remorseful for what she had done? Are we to believe that she really misses her mother; a mother whom she claims was an alcoholic who needed to be done away with?

Those of my readers who agree with me that it is far too soon for her to be released from prison should be mindful of the remark of her lawyer who vehemently disagrees when he said, "No, it isn't."

Her lawyer told the Sun newspaper. “The murder wasn't the act of someone who was mentally ill or suffering from a personality disorder. Instead it was, as the judge himself described it, situational.

Indeed it was situational. These two evil girls saw themselves in a situation in which they murder their mother and not have to deal with a mother who was sick with alcoholism and at the same time, they could benefit from the life insurance policy on their mother.

And what of their victim? Their mother, her name never to be known, was a 43-year-old single mom struggling with alcohol who worked two hospital jobs to support the girls and their younger half-brother -- and keep up with their increasing demands.

Obviously, it was never enough. The daughters didn't like their tawdry townhouse or even the Christmas presents their mom would scrape together to buy, once even throwing one back in her face.

Demanding and manipulative, the sisters were even figuring how their arrest a year after the murder could be turned to their advantage. The older girl asked the interrogating officer. "Is your education paid if you're in jail by the province or something?"

Her lawyer said at the February hearing that the older girl wants to be released to a youth-oriented halfway house in Brampton so she can study engineering at the University of Waterloo at taxpayers' expense. If released to the halfway house, she'll be able to go on escorted outings to the movies, enjoy recreational pastimes and visit family members as well as pursue a college education.

It is encouraging to know that both sisters are doing so well, that they have become model prisoners and well on their way to being rehabilitated. But surely, there still must be a penance to pay. Let them do their time. It's a mere six years ---- and that’s the least they should do for killing the woman who gave them life. Anything less; and they really are getting away with murder.

In public discussions and in the media, judges come under criticism for excessively lenient sentencing judged from the standpoint of the severity of a victim's suffering. Certainly the Canadian parliament has also come under severe criticism for passing a law that states that no matter how heinous the crime, a young offender only has to serve a maximum of six years in close custody as part of the sentence for murder. What this means is that if a young offender kills his parents and a sibling (and that has happened in Canada) he will only serve six years in custody. That’s two years for each death he brought about. Is that really justice?

Policies governing types and amounts of punishment around the world vary greatly. The most dramatic difference is between the United States, which continues to use the death penalty and life sentences without possibility of parole and where prison sentences exceeding ten years are extremely common, whereas the rest of the Western world has renounced the death penalty and where prison sentences longer than a few years are uncommon. If these girls had been convicted of first degree murder in the United States, they would probably have been sentenced to life in prison. In some countries, for example, Germany and Austria, prison sentences shorter than six months are regarded as destructive and serving no valid penal purpose and are therefore strongly discouraged. In others, including Sweden and Finland, certainty of punishment is seen as important, but not severity, and as a result many sentences to days or weeks of imprisonment are imposed where in other countries, months and years would be the norm.

In Canada, adult offenders who are convicted of first degree murder are automatically sentenced to life in prison and must serve a minimum of 25 years. This applies even if a convicted murderer has killed two or more persons. In the United States, a man who killed three persons was sentenced to 3,000 years. The sentence was 1,000 years for each of the three victims he killed. He appealed saying that the sentence was ridiculous. The appeal court agreed and reduced the sentence to 1,500 years.

Although the two sisters who murdered their mother were charged as adults, they only received young offender sentences. In the United States, young offenders charged as adults receive adult sentences and that means life in prison. In the past it meant death after they became adults. Iran recently executed an adult for a murder he committed when he was only 13 years of age. But comparing Iran with the United States with respect to their justice systems is like comparing worms with caterpillars.

I feel that punishment plays an important role in the sentencing process. If people who committed murder weren’t severely punished for their deeds, then families and friends of murdered victims would take the law into their own hands. When families and friends of murdered victims attend the courts at the sentencing phase of the trial, they are given an opportunity to express their anger against the murderer (providing it is done without screaming and the use of profanity) and in effect, they are for the most part, asking the judge to throw the book at them.

Obviously, anyone asking the court to severely punish the wrongdoer is seeking vengeance, of that, there can be no doubt. But what is so wrong about that? It’s a human trait in all of us and I question the sanity of anyone whose family has been murdered and then publicly declares he or she forgives the murderer. Do do so is a slap in the face of the corpses lying in their graves.

The representative from Elizabeth Fry and the oldest girl’s lawyer in the ‘bathtub murder’ case obviously are forgiving the oldest girl for cruely drowning her own mother in the bathtub. But ask yourself this rhetorical question. Would they be so forgiving if the same girl had murdered their mothers in their bathtubs? I think not.

I think that no matter how much they may have improved with respect to their outlook in life, they should serve the entire six years in prison. This will serve two purposes. The first, the need to punish and second, the need to deter others from doing the same thing.

As an interesting aside, on April 26, 2008, A 20-year-old man in the United States who was 15 when he was arrested, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in connection with the 2003 slaying of another person. He was then sentenced to 20 years in prison, with five suspended for the five years he served in jail waiting for his trial.

I will let you know what the court’s decision is with respect to whether or not these two horribly bad persons are going to be released into halfway houses.
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HAPPY NEWS: On May 6th, the two bathtub murderers got their hearing with respect to their request to be released from prison ahead of time. The judge said that releasing the sisters less than two years into their maximum sentence of ten years would be premature for the first degree murder of their mother. He said to them, "To put it bluntly, you need to do more time." He told the sisters that sentences are not only given to rehabilitate but also to hold people accountable for their crimes. He was in fact telling them and everyone else that when you kill a human being, you will be punished for your deed.