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U.S. influence on Canada ends with death penalty
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 25, 2001 VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Is Canada more American or more British? Based on the ubiquity of Starbucks, McDonald's, Gap and all the other U.S. chain outlets found hereabouts, Canada's American ties would seem plenty strong. But given last week's adoring welcome for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose brief visit to Ottawa included a ride along Queen Elizabeth Drive and an escort by Royal Canadian Mounted Police, you could hardly fail to note the many British influences on Canadian life. There's another major area in which Canadians and Britons are closely aligned: their staunch opposition to capital punishment. In 1973, Britain banned the death penalty for "ordinary" crimes including murder, partly in response to the horrific discovery that it had executed an innocent man. Canada outlawed capital punishment three years later, leaving the United States as the only Western democracy that still puts convicted criminals to death. Now, in what is seen as a scathing rebuke of the U.S. justice system, the Canadian Supreme Court has ruled that apart from "exceptional cases," no one should be extradited from Canada to the United States or other countries without assurances against execution. "Legal systems have to live with the possibility of error," the court said. "The unique feature of capital punishment is that it puts beyond recall the possibility of correction." And because there's no way to remedy a wrongful execution, the court continued, capital punishment violates Canada's protection of "life, liberty and . . . fundamental justice." The ruling comes at a time when more and more people are being freed from death row in the United States as DNA testing and legal misconduct weaken or destroy the cases against them. Last year the governor of Illinois put a moratorium on executions after a journalism class proved that five men had been wrongfully convicted of rape and murder. Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, the same year Canada abolished it, almost 700 people have been put to death in the United States. However, more than 90 death row inmates have been exonerated, some after spending years with the spectre of execution hanging over them. "The recent and continuing disclosures of wrongful convictions for murder in Canada and the United States provide tragic testimony to the fallibility of the legal system, despite its elaborate safeguards for the protection of the innocent," Canada's high court said this month. "The extradition decision of a Canadian minister could pave the way, however unintentionally, to send an innocent individual to his or her death in a foreign jurisdiction." The Canadian ruling stems from the 1994 case of two young Vancouver men, Atif Rafay and Glen Sebastian Burns, accused of beating Rafay's mother, father and sister to death with a baseball bat at the family home in Bellevue, Wash. The purported motive: to collect a large insurance policy. A year later the men were arrested here in Vancouver after allegedly confessing to undercover police. Canada's justice minister at the time decided the pair could be returned to Washington to face murder charges although there was no promise prosecutors would waive the death penalty. In its ruling, the court said Canada cannot extradite Rafay and Burns without first seeking assurances against execution. The men, who have been jailed in Vancouver since their arrest, presumably would be tried in Canada if Washington prosecutors refused to give those guarantees. In reality, there is little chance of that happening. So many other countries have abolished capital punishment that the United States must routinely waive the death penalty in order to get murder suspects back. Mexico extradited Jose Luis Del Toro, accused of slaying housewife Sheila Bellush in 1997, only after Sarasota prosecutors agreed to spare his life. Authorities in Philadelphia said they wouldn't push for execution if France returned convicted murderer Ira Einhorn. (So far, it has refused to do so.) And prosecutors in Florida's Bay County say they won't seek death if Canada extradites Monique Turenne, who faces first-degree murder charges of helping her lover kill Turenne's husband in 1996. Some critics worry that the Canadian Supreme Court ruling will only increase Canada's reputation as a haven for those fleeing the long arm of U.S. law. During the Vietnam era, draft dodgers by the hundreds poured across the border. More recently, a special Toronto police fugitive squad has nabbed dozens of U.S. murder suspects in Canada's largest city. "The majority of fugitives we get are from the U.S. because of No. 1, the close proximity and No. 2, the fast border crossing," says detective Sgt. Paul Feeney. "We certainly don't want people to think they can flee to Canada. I think there are going to be a lot of problems." Others worry the ruling could set a harmful precedent of courts meddling in foreign policy matters and the legal systems of other nations. Most, though, hailed the decision as evidence of Canada's fundamental decency, especially when contrasted to a U.S. justice system that now has more than 3,500 people on death row -- the most of any nation in the world. Said the Vancouver Sun in an editorial: "The court ruling affirms that we Canadians live in a civilized country and for that we should be thankful."
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