According To Stephen Harper Some Convicted Murderers Will Face the Prospect of Spending the Rest of Their Lives Behind Bars

According To Stephen Harper

Some convicted murderers will face the prospect of spending the rest of their lives behind bars and will have to appeal to the federal cabinet if they ever hope to see freedom again under tougher new sentencing rules.

My Only Question; Does HE Still Believe He, Bush, and Obama, are Above Canadian Law?

“For the Most Heinous Offenders and the most Horrific Crimes, a life sentence in Canada will henceforth mean exactly that — a sentence for life,” Harper said Wednesday.

Canadians ask rightly, why the most Dangerous, Habitual Criminals and Killers, once in prison, should ever be free again,” he said.

Speaking to an audience in Scarborough, Harper said amendments to the Criminal Code would be introduced next week to toughen the sentences for certain types of murder — “criminals whose crimes are so horrific that they shock the conscience of the entire community.” Harper said.

The changes are meant to keep some murderers behind bars for the rest of their life with no access to parole.

Robert William "Willie" Pickton Robert Pickton(born October 26, 1949 of Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada is a former multi-millionaire pig farmer and serial killer convicted in 2007 of the Second-Degree murders of six women. He was charged in the deaths of an additional twenty women many of them from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, however these charges were Stayed By The Crown in 2010. In December 2007 he was sentenced to life in prison, with No Possibility Of Parole For Twenty Five Years—The Longest Sentence Then Available Under Canadian Law For Murderand the Second Longest Sentence Available for any Crime--Indetermant (given to Dangerous or Habitual, Career Criminals) the longest. 

Evidence shows that many of the Woman Were Used For Pig Feed.

Swift Runner (aka Ka Ki Si Kutchin)

Swift Runner, of Cree descent, came to work for the North West Mounted Police as a guide since he was well known for his role as a guide with the Hudson’s Bay Company.

Police became suspicious of him after he came back to the Fort from a winter trapping trip with his family and no one returned with him.

Officers decided to get Swift Runner drunk, as he was known to be an alcoholic, and bring him back to his camp in the wilderness. At the scene of the crime, it became apparent to police that Swift Runner killed and ate his wife, mother-in-law, brother-in-law, and five children — one by one.

“They found the site of eight human bones. The bones were dry and hallow, empty even of marrow,” They discovered a cooking pot covered in human fat. They discovered human flesh hanging from the trees.”

Swift Runner was the first person to be hanged in Fort Saskatchewan in December 1879.

Emilio Picariello and Florence Lassandra

In Crowsnest Pass, Picariello was known as a local merchant and a bootlegger who stored alcohol in his hotel.

On a smuggling gone wrong, his son was shot in the hand by policeman Steve Lawson. Since Picariello didn’t see the shooting, he thought his son was mortally wounded and sought after Lawson.

There are two stories of what happened next in the bootlegging case.

One version says Lawson and Picariello struggled over a gun and it went off, while the other says Picariello shot the officer when he turned around to walk towards his home.

Florence Lassandra was riding with Picariello to make it appear as though they were going on a regular Sunday drive on country roads instead of smuggling. Rum runner Picariello asked Lassandra to take the blame for the shooting, thinking she would get only jail time, and said he would take good care of her and her family.

Lassandra agreed but after discovering that the penalty was death, she changed her story and the two blamed each other.

The judge didn’t know which person to believe and sentenced them both to be hanged.

It was quite the sensational case, where a lot of women in Alberta created petitions and wrote Letters to the Editor protesting the fact that she was going to be hanged — a woman that wasn’t even for sure guilty. But it didn’t do anything for changing the judge’s mind. Right up until she was executed, Lassandra pleaded her innocence. She was the first woman in Alberta, and the fifth and last woman in Canada hanged. Both were executed in May 1923.

Robert Raymond Cook

Robert Raymond Cook was the last person executed in Fort Saskatchewan in 1960. Cook’s case is controversial, regardless of whether he was guilty. After recently getting out of jail for robbery, Cook became the No. 1 suspect for the murder of his entire family in Stettler, including his father, step-mother, and their five children.

A police officer went to the family’s house and discovered a gruesome murder scene. There was blood on the bedroom walls, the mattresses were soaked in blood, there were bloody clothes underneath the mattress, and they looked further to find the whole family dead and stuck in a grease pit in the garage.

With one trial and an appeal, a second jury came to a verdict in less than 30 minutes. Cook retained his innocence up to the time of his death on Nov. 15, 1960.

A museum curator noted she spoke with jail guards or their descendants about Cook’s innocence, and she said people are split.

“Some of them said he was so nice that he couldn’t have possibly have done it, others said he was psychopathic and that he was so charming one minute, and deadly cold and mean in the next. A great deal of evidence has since pretty much confirmed that he was indeed innocent; but, after a person is dead there can be no further appeal.

So, who really knows?

"You Shall be Hanged by the Neck Until you are Dead."

Their crime: or at leas the crime that they were convicted of--MURDER. Their punishment: DEATH.

During the First World War, 25 Canadian soldiers were executed. Most were shot for service offences such as desertion and cowardice, but two executions were for murder. For details of these see List of Canadian soldiers executed during World War I.

One Canadian soldier,  Private  Harold Pringle, was executed during the Second World War for murder.

Capital punishment in Canada dates back to 1759, in its days as a British colony.

 Before Canada eliminated the death penalty for murder on July 14, 1976, 1,481 people were sentenced to death, with 710 executed. Of those executed, 697 were men and 13 were women.

 The only method used in Canada for capital punishment of civilians after the end of the French regime was hanging. The last execution in Canada was the double hanging of Arthur Lucas and Ronald Turpin on December 11, 1962, at Toronto's Don Jail.

On June 30, 1987, a bill to restore the death penalty was defeated by the House of Commons in a 148-127 vote, in which then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, then Minister of Justice Ray Hnatyshyn and then Minister of External Affairs Joe Clark opposed the bill.

Deputy Prime Minister Donald Mazankowski and a majority of Progressive Conservative MPs supported it.

Opinions on the noose have tended to shift over time. Protests in the 1960s were met with questions about preventing the murder of police officers and prison guards. Today, the debate is on-going, especially for multiple murderers like Clifford Olson and Paul Bernardo.

Shortly after midnight on Dec. 11, 1962, two cop killers will face death by hanging. They will be Canada's last executions. Ronald Turpin, 29, is convicted of shooting a Toronto police constable. Arthur Lucas, 54, is convicted of murdering an FBI informant working in Canada. Fighting the fierce cold, a small group of vocal protesters has gathered outside Toronto's Don Jail.

One of the Three Grisliest Moments in Alberta History, the Cook case harkens back to a time when capital punishment was an acceptable part of our culture.

Alberta: On 28 June 1959, police discovered Raymond and Daisy Cook along with their 5 children shot and bludgeoned to death in the grease pit of their garage in Stettler, Alberta. Robert Cook, Raymond Cook's son by his first wife, had been arrested in Stettler a day earlier, and charged with obtaining goods under false pretences after he had traded the family's 1958 Chevrolet station wagon for a '59 Impala convertible. Despite being implicated in the deaths of all of his family members. Robert Cook was only charged with the murder of his father in order to speed up the trial/death process.

At just after midnight on July 11, 1959, Cook escaped from the Ponoka Mental Institution after he was denied permission to attend the funerals of his family members. He was found several days later hiding at a pig farm near Bashaw, Alberta.

It took two trials and just under sixteen months for Cook to be convicted of murder. He maintained his innocence up until his execution. In the fall of 1959, a Red Deer jury deliberated for about an hour and twenty minutes before finding Cook guilty of murder. Evidence that he may have been elsewhere in the province at the time of the killings, along with unidentified fingerprints at the scene, and other potential suspects ­- including a former boarder at the Cook house and an inmate who fought with Cook - were not enough to raise a reasonable doubt in the minds of jurors.

After hearing the verdict, Cook stood with his hands clasped behind his back and spoke to the judge in a calm and steady voice.

"The only thing I have to say is that I am not guilty," he said.

"Is there anything else?" the judge asked.

"No, sir. I didn't do this and I couldn't have done it."

Cook was sent to the gallows at Fort Saskatchewan Provincial Gaol at midnight, November 14, 1960, and pronounced dead at 12:19AM on November 15, 1960.

"Men are dying for mere vengeance," one protester tells a CBC reporter, "when it's not going to accomplish any good at all." Last-minute appeals for clemency fail and Turpin and Lucas become the last two men punished by death in this country.