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Life sentence should mean just that, life in prison |
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Written by Al Hollingsworth
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Friday, 28 August 2009 |
Darren Muise, Freeman MacNeil and Derek Wood are the three soulless monsters who, on May 7, 1992 walked into the Sydney River McDonald’s and murdered three employees, while carrying out an armed robbery.
A 29-year-old maintenance worker and married father of one, Neil Burroughs, was shot, stabbed and beaten with a shovel. Another maintenance worker, 27-year-old Jimmy Fagan was shot dead. The shift manager that evening was Donna Warren, 22. They shot her in the head after she had opened the safe.
A fourth staff member, Arleen MacNeil was shot and severely wounded, and left permanently disabled.
Freeman MacNeil and Darren Wood were convicted of first degree murder in 1993and sentenced to life in prison with no parole for at least 25 years. Muise ducked the first-degree charge by pleading guilty to second degree murder and received a life sentence with no parole before 20 years were served. Muise, by the way, slit the throat of Neil Burroughs when he discovered he was still alive after having been shot in the head.
If there ever was a reason for life imprisonment to mean literally that you spend the rest of your life in prison, this case is it. Yet we find that 17 years after being sentenced, with no parole for 20 years, Muise has been allowed out of prison 200 times. That is nothing short of outrageous.
Neil Burroughs, Donna Warren and Jimmy Fagan will never get out of the graves in which these three put them. Their families will never be entirely free of the grief they have borne since May 7, 1992. The members of the National Parole Board should know that after the loss of a loved one it doesn’t get better, not ever. It gets different over time, but it does not get better.
At the parole hearing, the victims’ family members were not allowed to speak. Instead, they gave written victim impact statements. How cold is that? There is no emotion in a written statement. These people should be heard. Burroughs’ wife could tell them what it has been like as a single mother raising a child. Her son could tell of the father he never knew. Each of these people has a story to tell and deserves to be allowed to tell it.
This is just another example of how the Canadian justice system is weighted in favour of the criminal and not the victims of crime.
Where is the justice in this particular case? Darren Muise, a cold blooded killer, will soon walk the streets, as free as any one of us. That is wrong. Dead wrong. He and other killers should never, ever see the other side of a prison wall.
If Stephen Harper wants to get tough on criminals, and if he truly wants to help the north, he should build a massive prison near the Arctic Circle and send all the lifers there, for the rest of their lives.
All the rehabilitation programs and counseling be dammed, these people (if you can call them people) do not deserve to have one minute of freedom.
(Al Hollingsworth is a retired journalist and broadcaster)
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