Ruling in Canada’s ‘Mercy Killing’ Case Likely to Revive Euthanasia Debate

In a country that has rejected the death penalty and is bitterly split over abortion, the Canadian Supreme Court’s decision to refuse leniency in a so-called mercy killing affirmed the principle that no one--not courts nor criminals nor the best-intentioned individual--has the power to decide who shall live and who shall not.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court upheld the murder conviction of a farmer who killed his severely disabled daughter to end her chronic pain. The justices all agreed that mercy killing--no matter how well intentioned--is murder.

“His decision to end his daughter’s life was an error in judgment,” the decision read. “The taking of another life represents the most serious crime in our criminal law.”

Nonetheless, the justices hinted broadly in their ruling that the father should be pardoned by the federal government. Clearly sympathetic with the struggle by Robert Latimer and his wife to care for their 12-year-old daughter, Tracy, a quadriplegic with cerebral palsy, the justices included in their ruling the possibility of an official pardon as a “potential remedy for persons who have exhausted their right of appeal.”

Rather than closing the door on the debate after seven years of trials, convictions and appeals, the ruling’s veiled advice to seek clemency may simply revive it.

“We recognize the questions that arise in Mr. Latimer’s case are the sort that have divided Canadians and sparked a national discourse,” the decision said. “This judgment will not end that discourse.”

Tracy Latimer was born with cerebral palsy and serious brain damage and, at 12, had the mental capacity of an infant. Although she could smile and turn on the radio with a special button, she couldn’t move her limbs, talk or feed herself. A series of surgeries only worsened her suffering, her parents said.

The turning point for the Latimers was the news that Tracy faced an operation to remove one of her hip joints, and possibly the other one later. Laura Latimer said that she viewed the procedure as a form of mutilation and that she confided to her husband that their daughter might be better off dead.

Two weeks later, on an autumn morning in 1993 while the rest of family was at church, Latimer gathered his daughter into his arms and settled her in the front seat of his pickup truck. He rigged a hose from the tailpipe to deliver exhaust fumes into the cab, then watched her through the rear window until she died.

Latimer told his family and the police that Tracy had passed away in her sleep. It wasn’t until an autopsy revealed high levels of carbon monoxide in her blood that he confessed that he had killed her.

“There are wrong things and there are right things,” he told the court, “and I did the right thing.”

Latimer was convicted of murder in 1994. Three years later, an appeals judge reduced the life sentence to a year in jail and a year of house arrest on his farm in Saskatchewan, calling a long prison term for a desperate father unlikely to kill again “cruel and unusual punishment.”

That ruling was struck down in 1998, and a poll at the time showed that 70% of those surveyed believed that punishing his action as a murder was too harsh.

In upholding the life sentence Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that Tracy had not been dying, that she had not been able to express a wish to die, and that Latimer could have placed her in a specialized institution instead of ending her life.

The decision was applauded by advocates for disabled people, who argued that an exemption would threaten those who were least able to defend their right to live.

“Taking the life of another human being, whatever the rationale, is never justified,” said Cheryl Gulliver, president of the Canadian Assn. of Community Living. “When an individual is deemed incapable of making decisions due to mental disability or illness, then nobody has the right to decide death on their behalf.”

But the debate, sustained by libertarians and those with terminal illnesses who desire a legal right to assisted suicide, is likely to continue. Latimer’s lawyer has announced plans to apply for a parliamentary pardon after Latimer serves a year of his sentence. A report prepared for the Senate by a special commission on euthanasia discusses the creation of a third, lesser degree of murder to deal with cases like Latimer’s: “compassionate homicide.”

The question of the quality of mercy has gripped Canadians like few other issues, said Graeme Hunter, a philosophy professor at the University of Ottawa.

“Events like this make us confront questions that usually don’t bubble up to the surface,” he said. “We suspect that a severely disabled life is not worth living, yet we are ashamed of ourselves for thinking it. But we also want to shout that we are valuable--infinitely and unconditionally--in a way beyond our bodies and beyond the power of a court to decide.”

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Farley was on assignment in Canada.