Ottawa ordered to seek clemency for Canadian on death row

so this judge thinks he can make Canadian foreign policy?

SNAP, new headline:

Former Justice Robert Barnes is busy printing his CV...

Looks like we found a candidate for early retirement in these troubling economic times.

What I find interesting this guy in the states is not even protesting his own guilt....he just wants to be kept alive at the expense of the system.....what about the people he ruthlessly killed?.....I am sure they wanted to live too!!!

The US for all if its faults still has a decent justice system and this guy was found guilty of a double murder....dont do the crime if you cant man-up and face the music.

I volunteer to put the needle in his arm!!!!

From a strictly legal point of view, the judge was correct. The government either accepts capital punishment at home and abroad or rejects capital punishment at home and abroad. "Having your cake and eating it too"
is not alowed or to put it differently s "sometimes" support or rejection of capital punishment abroad is NOT legally defensible for any government.

just because previous governments didn't support it doesn't mean there can't be a change in policy. Just because capital punishment is not an option here doesn't mean we have the right to say you can't do it over there?

To play those games you have to be a world player and have some muscle to back it up.

do I need to remind you this is Canada? we believe in safe injections sites and gang shootings, not this pesky international stuff

what arctic? do we still have that stuff?

Not fighting for someone is far from accepting capital punishment. It's accepting the right of sovereign countries to police themselves.

Not fighting for someone is far from accepting capital punishment. It's accepting the right of sovereign countries to police themselves.

That is NOT how international relations work in the legal area. Repatriating nationals from foreign jails is the international norm for western democracies where capital or inhuman punishment is involved.

I think now we can see the difference between how things used to work and how they should work.

Does anyone here remember when this was current news and not just current events? I do! Here's a little bit of background on the 'Canadian Citizen' whom our fine folks in Ottawa are now going to go to bat for. Can you say 'Brenda Martin'???


Alberta man sentenced to die for murder

in Montana loses appeal - Tuesday, June 26, 2001

HELENA, Mont. (AP) -- Ronald Smith, of Red Deer, Alta., sentenced
to die 18 years ago for the execution-style murders of two
Montana men has inched closer to execution after losing an
appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The highest U.S. court refused to consider the case last week, a
move that ended Smith's options in state courts, assistant
attorney general Mark Fowler said Tuesday.

"He goes back to the federal court system," he said.

Don Vernay of Bigfork, Mont., Smith's lawyer, agreed and
said: "This should be the last round of appeals."

The U.S. Supreme Court's decision left in place a ruling by the
Montana Supreme Court last December that refused to overturn
Smith's death sentence for the kidnapping and murders of Thomas
Running Rabbit and Harvey Mad Man in August 1982.

Smith, 43, at first wanted to be executed before changing his
mind and deciding to fight his execution. During myriad appeals,
he has been sentenced to death three times. He is one of six men
on death row in Montana.

Smith admitted to abducting and killing Running Rabbit, 20, and
Mad Man, 23, after the two men picked up Smith as he hitchhiked
along U.S. 2 near Marias Pass. Planning to steal the men's car,
Smith marched his victims into the nearby bushes and shot them in
the head with a sawed-off .22-calibre rifle.

Smith said later he wanted "to find out what it would be like to
kill somebody."

Vernay said the issues in the federal appeals will be the same
raised in state courts, where the latest death sentence was
challenged as being handed down by a biased judge.

He claims the judge wrongly considered the earlier death
sentences and a report on Smith's mental condition that was
prepared by the state's psychiatrist.

In the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Smith already has
argued he did not have an effective lawyer when he pleaded guilty
to the crimes. That case is pending and Vernay expects no action
to be taken until the new round of federal appeals also reach the

circuit court. Fowler said Smith's execution will not occur any

time soon. "We're still a long way off. The federal procedures
will take a minimum of three to four years."



Ronald Smith (DOC # Unknown)