Re: “Robinson verdict an error in judgment,” Leader letters, Aug. 2.
Letter writer Dave Bains condemns the conditional sentence for ex-Mountie Monty Robinson as a “gross miscarriage of justice,” accusing the judge of having “made an egregious error in judgment.”
Surely, we should not be too surprised at B.C. Justice Janice Dillon merely dispensing the time-honoured standard fare of the many-splendored “blessings” of crime and punishment – Canadian style:
... where the rights of convicted criminals, such as Monty Robinson and his special Aboriginal status, trump the fate of their very real victims;
... where child abusers are inconvenienced with a mere three months in prison;
... where hit-and-run murderers have to endure the indignity of conditional sentences and house arrest;
... where the punishment of habitual offenders is measured not in terms of their crimes but in terms of the criminal being regarded as the real victim of societal neglect;
... where lenient sentences have made drug trafficking and organized crime the crime that pays;
... where bail is granted...few questions asked.
Not to worry though, here’s the quintessentially Canadian solution to really get tough on crime in this country – all crime: longer suspended sentences.
E.W. Bopp, Tsawwassen