Even as a detached observer, it is an extremely difficult thing to keep emotions out of cases of brutal killings such as Tammy Kulaway’s stabbing death in 2011.
On Tuesday, the Saskatchewan Review Board released its decision to conditionally discharge Richard Lesann, Kulaway’s killer, from custody.
There was never any doubt, nor did he ever denied she had died at his hands, but in September 2014, he was found not criminally responsible in her death.
There is little question that he was suffering from a serious mental disorder at the time.
Of course, to Kulaway’s family, and many members of the public at large, no verdict short of guilty of first degree murder and no sentence short of life in prison will ever be enough.
I can only imagine the horror that must accompany the news that, for all intents and purposes, your loved one’s killer is free less than five years after she died.
At the time, I wrote that “not criminally responsible” is something that just doesn’t seem right, even though legally it is.
If the verdict doesn’t seem right, then how wrong does it seem that this person, who killed another innocent human being is working, going to church and will be walking around free very soon while his victim is dead.
This is not a condemnation of the justice system, Lesann’s treatment team the review board or Lesann himself.
After the verdict, the family said they had been told we don’t have a justice system; we have a legal system. That’s not exactly right. We have a justice system; we don’t have a revenge system. There is no justice in holding a person responsible for something they are not responsible for.
I grapple with these concepts as most people do because they run so contrary to our emotional responses.
I am grateful, however, to live in an age when and a place where we are governed by the rule of law and not by our base instincts.
Our Criminal Code is unequivocal on the subject: “No person is criminally responsible for an act committed or an omission made while suffering from a mental disorder that rendered the person incapable of appreciating the nature and quality of the act or omission or of knowing that it was wrong.”
The medical professionals who have treated Lesann since his arrest at the scene of the killing, the legal professionals involved in the trial and subsequent reviews are entrusted with a very grave task, indeed.
They must also struggle with their emotional reactions and it would be very easy for them to give in that or to acquiesce to public opinion.
They are not infallible, of course, but now, they believe they are doing the right thing.
We have to trust them even if we disagree.
