Friday, July 16, 2010

Barbara Kay: The multicultural approach to justice

My observations on the sentence for a Muslim woman who strangled her child.

Justice Sal LoVecchio is typical of Canadian judges who, through feminist training, think of themselves as the new white knights out to save and empower females from the brutish males of the world. This translates to 90% sole physical custody to moms and statistically relevant, much lighter sentencing for females as compared to men for the exact same crime. The Latimer case is very apropos to compare.

Given the woman is a Muslim, is this the judicially, politically correct way to cover up an honour killing? A 300 pound Muslim felt threatened by a 14 year old girl and strangled her with a viciousness to suck the life out of her own child. Children suffer far greater negative consequences in the custody of single moms. In this case, and as is shown by USA government stats one of those outcomes is killing of a child by the mom in far greater numbers than by the biological father. The child had many strikes against her including being a Muslim, with an apparent controlling mother, who was single, and living in a modern secular country like Canada. The judge and apologists for this woman do no favours to children in similar circumstances. How do we let these kinds of people into the country?

This needs to be appealed and a sentence imposed equivalent to Robert Latimer. He also had no right to kill his child, despite what he thought was compassion, and this woman gets a free ride by a very naive and obsequious judge.MJM







  July 16, 2010 – 8:47 am
 
In 2007 Aset Magomadova, at the end of her tether in dealing with a troubled and by her account troublesome 14-year old daughter, strangled the girl to death with a scarf.

Let it be noted, before going any further into this story, that to kill a healthy human being by strangulation, you have to cut off their air supply for 2.5 to 3 minutes. They lose consciousness and go limp long before they are at risk of dying. So you really can’t argue that you have strangled someone in self-defence or by accident or in a moment’s confusion or loss of control. If a person dies after you have had your way with a scarf around her neck, you can be sure the intention behind the attack was not benign.

And now to the sentencing of Aset Magomadova. Calgary Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Sal LoVecchio convicted the mother of manslaughter, acquitting her on the original charge of second-degree murder, and pronounced a sentence of…probation. No jail time. Dead daughter. Mother killed her. No jail time.




In his 25-page decision, the judge said that “Showing mercy does not mean we disapprove of the act. It simply means sometimes a particular situation may demand a slightly different solution.” (my emphasis)

Apparently Magomadova’s lawyer really got to the judge with an account of the defendant’s “catastrophic” background in war-torn Chechnya, where her husband was killed in conflict while she was pregnant with a son who later was born with Muscular Dystrophy.

I would venture to say that many killers have a “particular situation.” Robert Latimer springs to mind. Robert Latimer was a white Canadian male of European extraction, so perhaps his “particular situation,” that of watching his profoundly disabled daughter Tracy, a victim of Cerebral Palsy, suffer the agonies of the damned for years in spite of every possible medical intervention available (which amounted to, in Latimer’s words, “mutilation and torture”), could not quite compete with the sad tale of a Muslim widow from Chechnya with an irritating daughter and a son with Muscular Dystrophy.

Latimer was convicted of second degree murder, but the judge in his second trial opted for leniency on the grounds that he acted from “compassion,” ordering a light sentence of one year in jail and one under house arrest. Not good enough for the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal, which insisted on the full weight of the law being applied, namely a life sentence. Latimer pleaded to the Supreme Court of Canada that he had had no choice but to end her suffering. Nope, the Supreme Court said, Latimer had other options and a ten-year sentence was not “excessive.”

Well, the Magomadova case is going to the Court of Appeal. Let us keep a careful eye on their appraisal of Judge LoVecchio’s multicultural approach to justice. And if it should go to the Supreme Court, even more so.

This LoVecchio judgment was simply outrageous. In an earlier musing, the judge opined that Aset Magomadova was not a danger to society. Well,  she was a danger to an individual who was helpless to escape her rage – her very own daughter. And what message does his “sentence” of probation send to other parents from other countries, war-torn or not, who believe that they have the power of life and death over their children?

Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/07/16/babara-kay-the-multicultural-approach-to-justice/#ixzz0trbWeRxF

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