It's fortunate that this case was heard by a jury. Here's where the judge was coming from:
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Minutes after a jury convicted Elaine Campione of two counts of first-degree murder in the drowning deaths of her little daughters, the trial judge suggested she belonged to a class of “weaker and more vulnerable” citizens who as “victim/offenders” sometimes “act out of the expected norm." If that seems a mild way to characterize the double murder of two innocent youngsters, taken in total, the remarks of Ontario Superior Court Judge Alfred Stong, who presided over Ms. Campione’s trial, amounted to a repudiation of the jury verdicts.
The jurors were into their seventh day of deliberation when they returned to court early Monday with their verdicts.
“It is more than disconcerting to think that if Ms. Campione had not been so abused, so used and discarded as a person, her two daughters could still be alive,” the judge said at one point, although the jurors, in fact, heard little direct evidence, beyond Ms. Campione’s own claims as reported to others, to support such a description.
Here was the judge's response to a request to have the father give a victim's impact statement:
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Prosecutor Enno Meijers made the request – it is a standard feature of criminal trials, even when the sentence is mandatory – but after Ms. Cremer objected and suggested the family could issue “a press release” instead, the judge snapped that “There is no way I’m going to permit him [Mr. Campione] to come in here” and refer to the bitter end of the couple’s marriage or Ms. Campione’s shortcomings.
If the judge had been hearing the case alone, the woman would have walked.
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