Inclusion Daily Express -- Disability Groups Challenge Public Sympathy For Latimer

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Disability Groups Challenge Public Sympathy For Latimer
By Dave Reynolds, Inclusion Daily Express
December 28, 2007

TORONTO, ONTARIO--Community Living Ontario, the Canadian Association for Community Living, and other disability groups are challenging the opinion, held by a majority of Canadians, that Robert Latimer should be released from prison before serving out his sentence for murdering his daughter.

Latimer admitted that on October 24, 1993, he rigged his pickup truck to pump exhaust into its cab. He also confessed to placing 12-year-old Tracy into that cab, and then watching from the bed of the vehicle while she suffocated to death. He has maintained that he killed Tracy because he did not want her to continue to suffer from her cerebral palsy, an intellectual disability, and constant physical pain.

Latimer was convicted of murder after the court heard testimony that at the time of her death Tracy was scheduled for hip surgery that was supposed to reduce pain and discomfort. In January 2001, the Canadian Supreme Court, upon ruling unanimously that Latimer must serve at least 10 years of a life sentence, noted that Tracy could have been given medication to relieve her pain, and that she appeared to enjoy life.

Earlier this month, the National Parole Board rejected Latimer's request for daytime parole because he refuses to admit that what he did was wrong. Canada's Civil Liberties Union continues to call for Latimer's early release.

The case has become a focal point of a debate between disability rights advocates that see Tracy's death as one of countless examples of extreme abuse of people with disabilities, and those who believe that killing is justified when the victim has a severe disability. Most on both sides agree, however, that the media and public sentiment favor Robert Latimer.

"We have to ask ourselves: if a father had been convicted of killing his daughter -- who didn't have a disability -- and showed no remorse for it, would there be many people supporting that?" asked Keith Powell, executive director of Community Living Ontario, in a press statement earlier this month.

In its own statement, the Canadian Association for Community Living, said: "The divide this case has awakened in the public consciousness of Canadians suggests there is something deeper at issue here -- about what it means to be human in the 21st century, what will count as full personhood, what will count as the basic values and protections on which Canadians, all Canadians, can count on."

Blogger and disability rights advocate Mark Pickup asked: "Would Robert Latimer be a folk hero and enjoy the support of a majority of Canadians if Tracey had been a healthy child? No, I don't think so."

In the years after Tracy's death, the number of Canadian murder cases in which parents killed their children skyrocketed. University of Alberta psychology professor Dick Sobsey pointed out that early news coverage was very sympathetic toward Mr. Latimer, often presenting him as a loving father.

"It was only during the trial that some of the things said in the media reports -- that Tracy was born dead and resuscitated, that she couldn't tolerate pain medication -- were shown to be false," Sobsey told the Edmonton Journal in 2002.

Related:
"The Robert Latimer Case - No Basis for Clemency" (Canadian Association for Community Living)
http://www.cnw.ca/fr/releases/archive/December2007/18/c4474.html
"Memory and Life of Tracy Latimer Must Be Honoured Following Parole Board Decision" (Community Living Ontario)
http://www.inclusiondaily.com/news/07/red/1228d.htm
"Sympathy for Latimer disturbing for disabled" (Western Catholic Reporter)
http://www.wcr.ab.ca/news/2007/1217/sympathy121707.shtml
"Tracy Latimer's Death: Mercy Or Murder" (Inclusion Daily Express Archives)
http://www.inclusiondaily.com/news/crime/latimer.htm

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