For the jury it was either/or, guilty/not-guilty, on the charge of manslaughter [? - i think] ... if they'd had a range of charges that included specific firearms offenses, they might likely have found Kesler guilty of one or more, instead of letting him off completely .... which would be better from the point of view of deterrence ... not so much necessary as penalty in the specific case imho, as K did thoroughly appear a moral man who made a mistake in the heat of the moment, and will be paying all his life knowing that he shot an unarmed human in the back
This was probably the result of hubris on the part of crown prosecutors, going for broke when they thought they had the edge, and mis-judging the jury
.. ah, just found out why "Stephen Kesler" won't google up this case - it's Steven with a V ... here's a brief but useful page from Alberta Report - report.ca
[says second degree murder, not manslaughter]
Small world - down at the bottom of that page there is a link to 'read more classic reports', from it you can get to this on Stalin's genocide against ukrainians, and the albertan connections [of whom i know more than a few who have moved out here to Lotusland, one has recently found a lot of info on tracing her family well back into the 1800s] - report.ca |
