News

Three members of the National Parole Board sat down with convicted murderer Robert Latimer yesterday morning to determine if he poses a risk to the community.

But after 80 minutes of grilling the silver-haired Saskatchewan farmer, the panel - two career bureaucrats and a retired police officer - couldn't get past his inability to express remorse for killing his severely handicapped daughter.

Mr. Latimer, who has served seven years of his life sentence for ending the life of 12-year-old Tracy in what he maintains was an act of mercy, lost his bid for day parole despite scant evidence that he might reoffend.

"The board was struck by the lack of insight you have developed in your seven years of incarceration," Kelly-Ann Speck told Mr. Latimer.

The finding could mean he may never be granted parole.

"If he has to admit remorse before he's ever going to get out, he'll be in for life. It's not going to happen," said his friend Ivan Bjornholt.

Mr. Latimer recounted his daughter's escalating medical problems after a difficult birth left her with cerebral palsy.

He told the panel he made up his mind to end her suffering when his wife Laura came home one day devastated by news that their girl required yet more surgery.

"She just said she'd like to call in Jack Kevorkian," he said, referring to the U.S. assisted-suicide advocate.

As he sat with his back to a packed room of observers, Mr. Latimer's voice cracked on several occasions when he described Tracy's medical treatment and his inability to offer anything more than the mildest pain relief.

"It got to the point where we were not going to do any more. ... We saw it as mutilating a child already in considerable pain."

Mr. Latimer recounted how, on Oct. 24, 1993, he drove his pickup truck out to a farm field, left his daughter in the cab and filled it with exhaust fumes.

"It struck me as a cold way to do it," challenged Ms. Speck.

"I wouldn't say that," Mr. Latimer replied. "It wasn't cold; not like changing a tire."

When she asked again about his emotional state, he replied: "No one's ever really asked me. It's a personal thing ... I still don't feel guilty."

Mr. Latimer did not tell his wife of his plans, and tried to cover his actions by placing Tracy in her bed and leaving her for his wife to discover when the rest of the family returned that day from church.

"I didn't have the ability to talk on a rational level," he explained.

Advocates for the disabled hailed the parole board's decision, saying vulnerable people are at risk if society accepts mercy killings.

"What we saw was such a profound lack of remorse for his action, it was deeply disturbing," said Laney Bryenton, a spokesperson for the Canadian Association for Community Living.

The question of remorse, or an admission or guilt, is not meant to be grounds to deny parole because it is not considered relevant to assessing risk.

However, criminal lawyer Robert Mulligan noted, the term "insight" often is used in parole hearings as a kind of code for remorse.

"They are looking for the mould of a repentant offender. And that's not always appropriate," he said. The argument is that if an offender doesn't recognize his actions were wrong, that he would be willing to commit the same act again.

But Mr. Latimer's parole officer at William Head, the minimum-security prison near Victoria, told the panel he was a model prisoner who did not need counselling.

The panel recessed for almost an hour before recalling Mr. Latimer to deliver its verdict. He sat silently as Ms. Speck outlined the findings.

The board strongly recommended he accept counselling.

A jury found him guilty in 1997 on a charge of second-degree murder but recommended he serve only a year in jail and another under house arrest at his farm near Wilkie, Sask.

The trial judge, Mr. Justice Ted Noble, found that Mr. Latimer's motive was to relieve what he saw as his daughter's terrible and unremitting pain and described the killing as a "compassionate" homicide.

But the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada altered the penalty to fit Canada's mandatory minimum sentence.

Mr. Mulligan said this case highlights the flaws in the mandatory terms. "You have a man who believes he was acting out of love - he'll likely maintain his view for his lifetime. By this reasoning he might be kept in prison forever."