WAS THE JUDGE IN THE CHILD MURDER CASE RIGHT TO ORDER THAT SOME EVIDENCE SHOULD NOT BE PRESENTED TO THE JURY?

Please ignore the brown background behind several of the paragraphs. The colour has no significant meaning. It was an anomaly in the system only. 

On the 8^th April in 2009, a sweet-looking eight-year-old girl was walking home from school in Woodstock, Ontario. Her name was Victoria (Tori) Stafford. Neither she nor anyone else for that matter knew that soon she would be raped and brutally beaten to death. Well, actually there were two persons who knew what her fate was going to be. They were; Terri-Lynne McClintic, then 18 and Michael Rafferty, then 28 years old.

Tori’s remains were found on July 19, 2009, wrapped in two garbage bags and buried under a rock pile in a field near Mount Forest, Ontario more than a hundred kilometres north of where she was last seen walking home from school on a sidewalk in Woodstock. Her body was wearing no pants or underwear.

A video in the front of a store later showed McClintic and Tori walking on a sidewalk across the street from the store. Another video that was in the hardware section of Home Depot in Guelph showed McClintic picking up a hammer and garbage bags which she later purchased. She admitted in court that she had randomly chosen Tori as the victim because her lover, Rafferty wanted a young child for sexual purposes.

It didn’t take long for the police to put a face to the woman after looking at both faces shown in the videos. McClintic and later Rafferty were subsequently arrested on May 20^th 2009. Rafferty was later charged with first degree murder, kidnapping and sexual assault.  

Because the girl was a prisoner on the floor of the rear seat in his car in the parking lot of the store where McClintic was shopping and she was raped and murdered by Rafferty (according to her confession) that is why he was also charged with kidnapping. His two charges were originally kidnapping and being accessory to murder after the fact. That latter charge applies when the suspect is accused of participating in the disposal of the body etc. However on May 28^th, McClintic was then charged with first degree murder because the police were convinced that it was he who murdered the little girl.

Terri-Lynne McClintic, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in 2010 and is serving a life sentence which in Canada is anywhere from 25 years to natural life. This isn’t the last thing I am going to say about this terrible woman. Read on.

Although the remains of the little girl were mostly decomposed, her bones showed that her skull was split in many places; she had 16 fractured ribs and a 15-centimetre cut in her liver.

Just because someone pleads guilty to murder, that in itself doesn’t necessarily mean that that person was the one who actually committed the actual act that brought about the death of the victim. For example, if the person was holding the victim down while another person was the one who delivered the fatal blows, the person holding the victim down can also be convicted of murder.

However at McClintic’s trial, she told her jury that she was party to the murder committed by Rafferty and that Rafferty was the person who raped the little girl on the back seat of his car. She said that when Tori had to pee, he escorted her out of the car and when she was finished, he took her back into the car to continue with his rape of the little girl. McClintic said that it was then that she heard Tori crying out to her; “Please, don’t let him do it to me again.” This vile woman ignored the little girl’s pleas. After all, she loved Rafferty and she wasn’t going to interfere with his raping the little girl.

In his opening remarks on March 5, 2012 to jurors in the Michael Rafferty trial, Ontario Superior Court Judge Thomas Heeney had explained to the jurors that in the weeks to come, they might be asked to leave the room while lawyers argued important legal matters in their absence.

The judge then said something to the jurors that dozens of his judges have uttered before him. “We are not trying to hide anything from you.”

But that wasn’t actually true. The spectators in the courtroom knew that he heard evidence that he decided would not be presented to the jurors. It is even possible that some if not all the jurors knew this also.

After pre-trial arguments held two months before the jurors were even selected, Judge Heeney ordered that a great swath of strong evidence of Mr. Rafferty’s sexual interest in children would not be presented to the jury as evidence of Rafferty’s propensity to be sexually interested in children. The judge also decided to withhold the Internet evidence found on Rafferty’s laptop because the police had not obtained a so-called secondary warrant to examine Rafferty’s computer, in addition to the original warrant to search his home and car. In fact, Canadian law at the time of the investigation in 2009 was evolving on this point, and did not require a secondary warrant. But the judge still ruled that the search of Rafferty’s laptop violated his Charter rights because the evidence it produced might have prejudiced the jury against him.

Because of that decision released on January 31, 2012, the jurors during the trial didn’t hear that forensic examination of Mr. Rafferty’s laptop which revealed that in the months leading up to the eight-year-old’s slaying, Rafferty had done Google searches for “underage rape,” “real underage rape” and “best program to download child porn,” or that he had recently possessed substantial amounts of child pornography, including videos depicting “how-to instructions for child sexual assault” and others with what prosecutors called “a disturbing instructional purpose” and even several “snuff” films and much more. Other terms Rafferty Googled were; “necrophilia videos”, “naked girl seizing”, “epileptic naked attack”, and “seizure girls”.

They also found in his laptop that he downloaded a film titled, Gardens of the Night which is a little-known Hollywood movie about the abduction of a pretty blond girl while she is on her way from school.

Now there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that if that evidence had been presented at Rafferty’s trial, the jurors would take very little time in convicting that man of rape, if not murder. When they later learned that the laptop information wasn’t disclosed to them before they went into the jury room to make their decision, they were furious.

In any case, Rafferty’s lawyer, Dirk Derstine had argued at the pretrial motions that although the police had the authority to seize Rafferty’s laptop out of his car, they didn’t obtain a second warrant to conduct a search into its contents. For this reason, he said, none of what they discovered in the laptop should be presented as evidence against Rafferty to the jurors.

The law governing computer and electronic searches was then very much in a state of flux. There had been judicial hints that without a secondary warrant, such searches might not survive a Charter challenge.

When the forensic examiner asked if he needed a secondary warrant to examine Rafferty’s laptop, a senior OPP officer and head of the search warrant team, Detective-Sergeant Bryan Gast, told him that he didn’t. He relied on his experience, his training and on his reading of a law book, Hutchinson’s Canadian Search Warrant Manual.

In the edition Det.-Sgt. Gast had, the author warned vaguely against wide-ranging police searches and concluded, “At present, these issues remain unresolved but it is likely they will be challenged as over (improper) seizure.”

And sure enough, just two months after the police had examined Mr. Rafferty’s laptop without first getting a search warrant to do so, came that first decision, a case called R v Little, which said clearly that police should seek secondary warrants before looking at items that have already been seized.

But, while admitting that at the time of the search, no binding authority indicated that the police were obligated to obtain a separate search warrant to examine the laptop, Judge Heeney in pretrial motions in Rafferty’s trial nonetheless found that Det.-Sgt. Gast took the risk of looking at the contents of the laptop knowing that the law might change and that if it did, he would require a second warrant before searching the contents of the laptop.  Obviously, Gast should have applied for a second warrant. He would have got it and once he had it, he could search for the contents of the laptop. That decision not to seek the second search warrant resulted in him losing a gold mine of information that would have been damming to Rafferty’s defence. All he could do now was to seal up the mine.

Search warrants are statutorily authorized investigative aids issued most frequently before criminal proceedings have been instituted. Almost invariably a peace officer prepares the search warrant and information without the benefit of legal advice. 

The search warrant information the affiant (the person making the request for the warrant) is obliged to state under oath are the investigative facts sufficient to establish rea­sonable grounds for believing that an offence has been com­mitted, that the things to be searched for will afford evidence, and that the things in question will be discovered at a specified place. An issuing justice is entitled to draw reasonable inferences from those stated facts.  The affiant is not obliged to record every minute step taken in the course of the investigation. Mere suspicion, conjecture, hypothesis or "fishing expeditions" fall short of the minimally acceptable standard from both a com­mon law and constitutional perspective. Not only must the affiant subjectively or personally believe in the accuracy and credibility of the grounds of belief, but lawful issuance of a warrant also requires that the police officer estab­lish that, objectively, reasonable grounds in fact exist.

In other words, would a reasonable person, standing in the shoes of the police officer, have believed that the facts probably existed as asserted and have drawn the inferences therefrom submitted by the affiant? Is so, the warrant would be issued.

However, in the matter before the judge in the Rafferty trial, the question that must have entered the judges’ mind was; “Why didn’t the police place in their affidavit for the warrant that they had good reason to believe that Rafferty had pictures of child molestation in his laptop? If they had said that, were they going on a fishing expedition?

If they had arrested him for impaired driving and nothing else, then I would say yes. But they were told by McClintic that he had raped a little girl in the back seat of his car. The fact that the back seat was removed by Rafferty is certainly evidence that McClintic wasn’t lying. That was sufficient grounds for the police to believe that Rafferty was a child molester and as such, it was highly probable that he had pictures of children being raped in his laptop and that he had been searching for such pictures through Google. Their search warrant should have included permission not only to seize the laptop but also to search for pictures and information in his laptop. Instead, they simply asked for permission to seize it.

The judge ruled that though the police had acted legally in getting search warrants for Mr. Rafferty’s home and car, and though they honestly believed that was sufficient to allow for a forensic examination of the hard drive, BlackBerry and laptop found therein, they didn’t get the necessary second warrant to examine them and therefore what they discovered in the laptop could not be used as evidence against Rafferty at his trial.

I realize that this seems unfair that the information found in the laptop could not be used as evidence against Rafferty but there is a justifiable reason why such an order should be given. If an exception had been made in this particular case, then eventually the cops would believe that there isn’t any need to seek a warrant to search laptops or any other computers. The interests of the security of the general public from illegal seizures would then be at risk.

And in a decision made during the trial, when prosecutors tried to persuade the judge that the landscape had changed and he should re-consider his decision at least so far as the Google evidence was concerned.

Section 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms recognizes that the rights and freedoms of Canadians are not absolute; they are not guaranteed to such an extent that they may never be violated or limited. Section 1, instead, states that these rights and freedoms may be limited under certain circumstances if they are in the best interests of the general public. For example, if a serial murderer had written in his computer the particulars of all of his murders, but the computer had been seized without a search warrant, and that was the only real proof that he was the murdered of all those victims, the evidence would be submitted to the jury. To do otherwise would result in a serial killer being released back into society again where he could kill more victims. The prosecution in such a case could provide good cause or reason for violating the defendant’s Charter rights.

In my respectful opinion, I believe that Judge Heeney should have permitted the evidence found in Rafferty’s laptop to be presented to the judge but instead, he refused the prosecutor’s request to include it as evidence. Suppose the jury didn’t believe McClintic’s original statement to the police but believed her later when she said at Rafferty’s trial that it was she who committed the murder and not him. They might then only convict him of kidnapping and sexual assault and not first degree murder. That means that he would be released sooner than he would be if convicted of first degree murder. The evidence in his laptop may then be enough to convince the jurors that in likelihood, he really did kill the little girl. Of course, we will never know for sure.  

The Charter itself is a short document with only very general statements about the nature of the rights and freedoms it provides. As such, Charter rights are often somewhat unclear or highly contestable regarding their precise meaning and application to real life situations. The courts are interpreters of the Charter in this sense; it is their responsibility to clarify these uncertainties in meaning and application. Moreover, in exercising this role, the courts have a significant impact on politics and public policy in Canada.

There was also some other evidence that the judge felt shouldn’t be heard by the jury.

There was evidence that Mr. Rafferty had a penchant for sexual choking. The prosecutors had lined up no fewer than 12 women — not counting Terri-Lynne McClintic herself — who would have testified about Mr. Rafferty’s fondness for choking his partners. The sexual choking had some real significance given by McClintic’s evidence — in her first version of the killing, when she claimed it was Mr. Rafferty who did it — that she had heard a “gurgling” sound coming from Tori in the moments before her death. She interpreted those sounds to mean the little girl was being choked, a practice with which she (McClintic) was not unfamiliar.

The jurors never heard any testimony from any of the 12 women (other than McClintic) because the prosecutors didn’t try to have it admitted. They knew that the judge would rule that such testimony would be prejudicial towards the defendant and as such; it would outweigh its marginal probabtive value. This requires an explanation.

Normally it is to the prosecutor’s advantage to submit bad character evidence of individual conduct prior to the latest crime the defendant committed. In the Rafferty case, the evidence of him being a violent man who was sexually aroused when choking women might be construed by the jurors that if he was so inclined to do that to women, perhaps he also was inclined to choke the little girl while he was raping her. The problem was that there was no evidence that he had strangled her while he was raping her except the gurgling sound that McClintic said she heard. But that sound may have been heard while Tori was choking on her blood while Rafferty was beating her to death.  

The prejudice would be much higher than the probative value and subsequently unfair if applied against him since the events with the women he choked were not in any way similar with the raping of the little girl. In other words, just because a man chokes women that willingly have sex with him, doesn’t necessarily mean that he chokes little girls he rapes and intends to kill. Unfortunately, jurors are not versed in the law and they are prone to making decisions based on their personal opinions of the defendant on trial. If they saw him as a man who chokes women during sex, they might also see him as a man who would choke a little girl while he was raping her.

Now if he had taken the stand to give evidence (which he did not do) and said that he never would have choked the little girl, then he might have opened the door for the prosecutor to then bring out his previous choking episodes with the women he had sex with. Fortunately for Rafferty, his lawyers convinced him not to take the stand because (and for other reasons) if the prosecutor asked him if he choked the girl to death and he denied it (and there was no evidence that he had choked her while raping her) then the prosecutor asked if he had ever choked anyone, he might admit that he had done that to women during the sex act. If he denied it, then the prosecutor would then bring in the women he choked unless of course the judge put an end to that tactic—which he would have in any case.

It goes without saying that the judge would be furious if the prosecutor asked that question since he would know that it was a trick to get around the previous order of the judge that that information was not to be disclosed to the jury. That would then cause the lawyers for the defence to ask for a mistrial. But even then, the damage would be beyond repair because by the time the second trial came about, everyone would already know that Rafferty choked women while having sex with them and any order by the second judge to the new jury that they were to ignore what they read in the newspapers would be pointless. The jurors would still have that in their minds anyway.

Clarence Darrow, a famous American defence lawyer in the early part of the last century in one particular trial placed a small fluffy pink elephant on the jury bar in front of the jurors and told them to ignore it. During his closing argument, he asked them with a show of hands if they had ignored the fluffy elephant. None their hands went up. Then he said to the judge, “As you can see Your Honour, no matter how much you tell them to ignore what they heard, they will still have it in their minds.”

The ‘triers of the facts’, which is the role jurors play at trial, often don’t have before them some of the most critical facts because certain evidence is kept from them, and the vaunted truth-seeking function of the trial is thusly distorted if not outright foiled. There have been many cases in which the only real evidence that the defendant committed the murder had not been given to the jury because the evidence was obtained illegally or alternatively, would be too prejudicial and for this reason, the charge was dismissed and the murderer walked free,

When Rafferty’s trial finally began in April 2012, the now 31-year-old defendant pleaded not guilty to kidnapping, sexual assault and first-degree murder in the April 8, 2009, slaying of the little Woodstock, Ontario girl named Victoria (Tori) Stafford. The entire country was glued to their TV sets, their radios and their eyes were also glued to the newspaper accounts of the trial as was my own.

During Rafferty’s trial, McClintic had testified about some of the events that took place during the kidnapping and murder of the little girl. However, just before Rafferty’s trial, McClintic told a counsellor at the jail she was in that she was the one dealt the fatal blows to the girl and now at Rafferty’s trial, she said that it was she who beat the little girl to death and not Rafferty. Now why would she do that?

Criminal suspects not placed under coercive or other psychological pressure sometimes willingly volunteer false statements for self-interested or venal reasons, such as to protect someone else or to gain notoriety, attention, or some other psychological benefit. McClintic had nothing to lose by confessing to having been the person who beat the little girl to death. She couldn’t be retried or re-sentenced since she was already convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

Over the years, this phenomenon has occurred in several high-profile cases.  When Charles Lindbergh’s infant son was kidnapped in 1932, approximately 200 people—all of whom were innocent—voluntarily stepped forward to confess.  More recently, in 2006, John Mark Karr voluntarily claimed responsibility for the unsolved murder of JonBenet Ramsey.  There are several reasons why innocent people might confess without prompting—such as a pathological need for attention or notoriety; feelings of guilt or delusions of involvement; the perception of tangible gain; or the desire to protect a parent, child, or someone else.

I think McClintic’s motive was to protect Rafferty. They were lovers and she had betrayed him when she was arrested. Perhaps she wanted to make amends for that betrayal. I don’t think it was simply for the notoriety.

Further, she wasn’t at risk from fellow inmates in prison by confessing to murdering the little girl because she is already in protective custody and will be all the time she is in prison.

I want to point out a change in the law with respect to what was originally called felony murder. Under the earlier Criminal Code provisions, which the Supreme Court of Canada struck down, the Crown would have had little difficulty in securing a murder conviction against Rafferty because it would not be required to demonstrate that he knew his then-girlfriend Terri-Lynne McClintic intended to kill Tori Stafford. Under the old Criminal Code, he could be guilty of murder simply by intentionally kidnapping and sexually assaulting a child, even if his deranged girlfriend was the one who swung the hammer. This falls under the traditional “felony murder” rule — whereby those who willingly engage in serious criminality are guilty for the act of murder even if it is a partner (in crime) who commits the physical act of killing the victim.

Nowadays, to be convicted of first degree murder, the prosecution must show that the person accused of first degree murder actually committed the murder and wasn’t simply someone who knew that his or her partner was committing the murder and did nothing to prevent the murder while he or she was present during the murder.  

When the matter was put to the jury, the 12-member jury asked for the court to reconvene so they could ask two more questions. They wanted to know whether someone who removes a child’s underclothing during an illegal confinement could be found guilty of sexual assault. Justice Heeney told jurors that this ‘does’ constitute sexual assault because the removal is ‘an act of force’ no matter how slight.                                                                                                                                      

The jury then asked for clarification in his charge regarding their consideration of evidence in the trial. Heeney replied;

“If you totally reject evidence that points to innocence; that does not (necessarily) point to affirmative guilt. Look at the rest of the evidence.”

The jury later asked to re-watch a May 24, 2009 video where McClintic told OPP Det. Sgt. Jim Smyth about the events on the day Stafford was abducted and killed.

In the video, an emotional McClintic told the senior interrogator that Rafferty had raped and wielded the fatal hammer blows to the girl’s skull. “I could hear her (Tori) calling my name,” she told Smyth at the Woodstock, Ontario police station that day. “I knew she wasn’t OK.”

McClintic actually told the investigators that Rafferty had been the one who kicked, stomped and fatally struck the girl in the skull in the secluded field that evening following his repeated sexual assaults against the little girl.

Heeney told the jurors in daylong instructions that they should use ‘common sense’ when reviewing the evidence they had seen and heard.

I for one (if I was a juror at that trial) would have put more credence in McCintic’s original statement to the investigating officers than the statement she made in court. The jury also felt the same way.

After listening to 61 witnesses and looking at 186 exhibits over a period of eight weeks, the jury convicted Rafferty of first degree murder, kidnapping and sexual assault in the first day of their deliberations. He was sentence to 25 years to life in prison for the murder and the other two sentences for kidnapping and sexual assault are to be served concurrently with the first degree murder sentence. The reason why the sentences for other two convictions are to be concurrent is because when a murderer is sentenced to life in prison for first degree murder, it’s moot to add years to a life sentence. But you can be sure that when he applies for parole after serving a minimum of 25 years, the members of the National Parole Board will look into the other two convictions also before making up their collective minds. 

I should point out however that since his arrest in 2009, he had served at least three years in custody and under Canadian law, those three years are automatically deducted from the 25-year sentence which means that he can apply for parole after serving 22 years in prison. McClintic only served one year in custody before her trial so she has to serve 24 years in prison before she can apply for parole.

In Canada, it is possible that convicted murderers can apply for an early release after serving only 15 years in prison but to be successful, they must convince a second jury hearing their applications and then decide if the murderers should be released.  I doubt that any second jury would be willing to risk releasing these two human monsters back into society.

After having served 25 years in prison, they can legitimately apply to the National Parole Board for parole. Quite frankly, I doubt that they will get it.

Calgary child-killer and rapist Harold Smeltzer is back in jail after being arrested in Regina. Smeltzer, 56, was arrested in January 2012 at the halfway house in Regina where he had been on day parole since 2008. He had been there after serving 27 years in prison for killing a young girl in Calgary in 1980. The Parole Board of Canada believed that he was a risk to re-offend after staff at the house searched his room in November 2011 and found a DVD with ‘sexual content, coarse language and not recommended for children.’

In 1980, Smeltzer kidnapped Kimberley Thompson, 5, while she was walking to kindergarten and drowned her before stuffing her body into a garbage can. He had already raped numerous children.

The board said in the report;

“You have admitted to sexually assaulting over 40 young children over a five-year period, all a product of your meticulous planning and fantasy.”

Conrad Brossard was serving two life sentences for a murder as well as two attempted murders, each of which was committed after being granted day parole. In 2002, the parole board granted Brossard day parole again, during which he raped and murdered Cecile Clement.

Eric Norman Fish was released to a half-way house in 2004 in Vernon, British Columbia. Fish had been serving a life sentence for a 1984 murder and had been deemed by the Parole Board to be a “high-risk to violently re-offend.” Despite that he was paroled. Fish then walked away from the half-way house he was ordered to reside in and over a period of six weeks he murdered two people; Jeffrey Drake, whose body was found on the shore of Okanagan Lake, and Bill Abramenko, a 75-year-old retired carpenter, who Fish beat to death with a crowbar.

Allan Craig MacDonald was paroled in late-1989 after serving only 12 years for murdering a police officer and a taxi driver. In April 1990, MacDonald beat, raped, stabbed, and murdered 21-year-old Linda Shaw and set her body on fire.

Robert Bruce Moyes was granted day parole in 1995, even though he was serving a life sentence for multiple armed robberies and had a total of 36 criminal convictions, including three attempted murders and three escapes from prison. Moyes also had numerous previous parole violations. Within a year of being paroled, Moyes and an accomplice murdered seven people.

John Lyman Kehoe was paroled in 1986. He had been sentenced to life in prison for murdering his two children in 1972. In 1996, Kehoe and another paroled multiple murderer attacked real estate agent Wendy Carroll. Carroll was choked and had her throat slit, although she did survive.

Leopold Dion was paroled in 1963, despite being sentenced to life in prison for rape and attempted murder and previously violating parole by sexually assaulting a young boy. Within 18 months of being released, Dion molested 21 children and murdered four of them. Dion was subsequently killed in prison.

Michael Hector received full parole after only serving half of a 13-year sentence, even though he had an extensive criminal history, had previously violated parole and had been described in psychological assessments as “a highly criminalized man.” In early 1997, approximately 18 months after his release, Hector murdered three people, including a young boy.

Kevin Humphrey was granted paroled despite being sentenced to life for robbing and murdering a man in 1983 before fleeing the country. Despite three previous parole violations, Humphrey was paroled again in 2006. In October of that year, Humphrey stabbed Richard Kent multiple times with a folding knife and then slit his throat in a crack house. Although Kent survived, he still has brain injury symptoms and memory problems.

Daniel Jonathan Courchene, a known gang member, was kept on parole even though the Board knew that Courchene was repeatedly violating his parole by using intoxicants. While on parole, Courchene and an accomplice attempted to kill a police officer by shooting him in the face, stole several vehicles, and committed a home invasion in which they attempted to kill the owner.

It is beyond all understanding as to why the Canadian National Parole Board released these criminals in the first place.  If they had committed their crimes in the United States, they would either be executed or sentenced to prison for the rest of their natural lives and in some courts, they would be sentenced to hundreds of years in prison, not that they would live that long. It is the intent of most if not all American criminal courts that murderers never be set free once they have been convicted of murder, especially if they murdered a child they sexually assaulted.

The court can impose indeterminate sentences as a dangerous offender on any individual it considers, upon conducting a special hearing after conviction. This provision applies to those offenders who have been convicted of serious personal injury offenses and who have backgrounds of persistent aggressive or violent behaviour. This could apply to McClintic but not to Rafferty. In any case, no such hearings took place after their convictions were rendered.

Not all murderers are automatically released after serving 25 years in custody. Let me give you an example.

In August 1977, Emmanuel Jacques at the age of 12 was working as a shoeshine boy on Yonge Street in downtown Toronto. He was lured into an apartment above a body rub parlour, raped, strangled and drowned in the kitchen sink. Saul David Betesh and Robert Wayne Kribs were convicted of first-degree murder. Betesh is still in prison. So far, he has served 34 years in prison. Betesh was eligible for a parole hearing in 2002, but he waived the right and has continued to do so every two years, probably because he believes that he’ll never be released. Kribs has spent more than three decades downplaying or ignoring his role in the sexual torture and murder of Emanuel. Kribs is eligible to seek parole every two years, since he passed his 25-year eligibility date in 2002. He could request a hearing at any time, because he waived his right to a hearing in 2004, 2006 and 2008 but he is still in prison serving his 34^th year in custody.  Josef Woods was convicted of 2^nd degree murder. He was asleep when the boy was strangled and drowned but he participated in the rape of the boy and was aware that the boy might be killed. He was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 18 years. He’d been denied parole in 1995, 1996, 1998 and 2000. He was in prison for 25 years before his death in prison in 2003.  

The National Parole Board has to take into consideration not only the crimes that the applicants have committed, but also previous or subsequent crimes they committed and their behavior in prison.

McClintic was born to a stripper in Woodstock in 1990. At birth, her mother handed her over to Carol McClintic, her best friend and a fellow stripper. Carol became her mother and in the next few years, the two lived all over Ontario, moving every couple of years. They lived in Guelph, Hamilton, North Bay, Parry Sound, and Muskoka. The moves meant McClintic attended many schools. Her attendance, she admitted, was always a problem. At school, she says she was bullied because she was a stripper’s daughter.

It’s not clear where McClintic was when she started doing drugs, but she was about 8 years old. McClintic started with weed, slowly graduating to harder drugs. From then until 18, she was a serious drug-user.

She spent her childhood at two foster homes and her teenage years at detention homes. From age 12 to 17, she had been in and out of detention homes for numerous misdemeanors such as fighting and she was convicted of assault at least six times. Even in youth detention, she was perpetually in trouble. She wrote long, lurid letters and diary entries in which she threatened those who had wronged her, venting about “slaughtering” someone and “ripping out each bone.” She signed those letters “murderouz bitchez,” a sign-off she liked using for herself. When she was living at home, when she was only 16, she got into a fight with her mother, punching her and causing her to nearly lose an eye. She even admitted that she micro-waved the small family puppy until it began screaming in pain. The puppy later had to be put down to end its agony from the burns. Even while she was in prison serving her life sentence, she kicked and stomped on another inmate.

Here is a real shocking piece of news about this child killer. While in prison waiting to testify in Rafferty’s trial, she told her godmother who visited her that she was sad about Tori’s death because Tori was a little girl but when asked if she would kill again, McClintic replied, “Yes. I would do it again.” The irony of such a statement is that the Rafferty jury arrived at the conclusion that it was Rafferty that murdered Tori and not McClintic. But the fact that McClintic admitted that she would be willing to kill someone is frightening indeed.

Michael Rafferty’s childhood years weren’t as hectic as McClintic’s and he had no previous criminal record (not even a parking ticket) but in 2009, he went out with more than a dozen women even though he was living with another one. He even pimped out one of his girlfriends and lived off of her earnings. His taste for women ranged in ages between 23 and 50. He lied to his sexual partners saying that he had a rough childhood, that he was suffering from colon cancer and that even his mother had cancer. He told some that he was a dance instructor and others that he owned a contracting company and that he had just lost a step-son. As I mentioned earlier, he had this penchant to choke women during the sex act. Between January 25^th 2009 and April 7^th of that same year, he downloaded child porn and particulars of a snuff movie into his computer along with the sale of babies etc. There were women (who were never identified) who told investigators that Rafferty’s interest in their children was disturbing. He even asked one of them if she would give him her first-born baby. He asked online if he could sleep with her and have the baby in the same bed so that he could snuggle up to her.

If you were invited to sit on the National Board when these two horrible criminals were applying for parole, how would you rule? Would you be like the simpletons in National Parole who released those other killers who then committed more murders or attempted to do so? Would you really believe that no matter how much Rafferty and McClintic claimed that they had reformed, you would be prepared to release them back into society again?

One of the factors that the Parole Board should take into consideration is the need for society to feel that keeping these killers in prison is just. Unfortunately, they don’t really consider that factor. They only concentrate (or they are supposed to) on whether or not it is safe to release them into society. Recidivism of parolees brings disrespect to the National Parole Board, especially if these paroled killers murder more victims after they have been released back into society.

In the New Testament, in Mathew verses 38 and 39, Jesus said;

“But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”

The National Parole Board in the past turned the public’s left cheek to the released murderers so that they would get a second chance to smite them rhetorically on the public’s other cheek. And smack them they did and sometime with fatal results. Rarely does retribution with its halting gait, overtake the guilty that have a head start. After the National Parole Board has its fling and releases their child killers, watch out for their sting.