In a ruling that could set a benchmark for the country’s most serious crimes, the Supreme Court of Canada will announce the number of years the gunman who killed six people in a mosque in the United States will spend in prison. Quebec City before going to jail. eligible for parole.
Alexandre Bissonnette pleaded guilty to six counts of first-degree murder and six counts of attempted murder for assaulting worshipers at the Islamic Cultural Center on January 29, 2017.
To decide the minimum number of years Bissonnette should spend in prison before being eligible for parole, nine judges of the Supreme Court of Canada examined the constitutionality of a sentencing provision introduced in 2011 by the Conservative government. by Stephen Harper.
This provision gave judges discretionary powers to distribute consecutive blocks of disqualification periods for multiple first-degree murders.
Shortly after Bissonnette was convicted in 2018, Crown prosecutors had called for his probation period to be set at 150 years, 25 years for each person he murdered.
It would have been the harshest sentence in Canada since the abolition of the death penalty.
Instead, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 40 years, the longest period of disqualification from parole ever imposed in Quebec.
That decision was overturned in November 2020 by a unanimous decision of the Quebec Court of Appeal, which reduced Bissonnette’s waiting sentence to 25 years.
Crown prosecutors are now asking Bissonnette to wait 50 years before being eligible for parole.
Six men were killed in an attack on a Quebec mosque. They are, clockwise from top left, Mamadou Tanou Barry, Azzeddine Soufiane, Abdelkrim Hassane, Ibrahima Barry, Aboubaker Thabti and Khaled Belkacemi. (CBC)
Before making their decision, Supreme Court judges had to determine whether extending a person’s term in prison by stacking consecutive blocks of ineligibility for parole violates the following sections of the Canadian Charter. rights and freedoms:
- Article 12, which states that “everyone has the right not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
- Article 7, which states that “everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person and the right not to be deprived of his or her rights except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.”
Judges could also conclude that a violation is justified under Section 1 of the Charter, which subjects rights and freedoms to “reasonable limits prescribed by law that can be duly demonstrated in a free and democratic society.”
Friday’s sentence could alter the fate of other convicted murderers such as Justin Bourque, who is serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole for 75 years for killing three RCMP officers in Moncton, NB, in 2014.
The Supreme Court’s decision will be made public shortly before 10 a.m. ET.