This is such a tough one. On the one hand, you have a vulnerable child suffering from serious and painful disabilities. On the other hand, you have a down-to-earth farmer who, by all accounts, was a loving and sensible father, who simply decided one day that he couldn't bear his daughter's continued suffering and went ahead and put an end to it. You have protection of the weak, the disabled, the voiceless. You have a justice system that ends up sentencing this father to a longer sentence than Karla Holmolka, who merely helped her husband rape, torture, and murder several young women.
I don't disagree with the Supreme Court's decision to force Latimer to serve his sentence. I don't see how they could have ruled otherwise. The question is not, in any case, whether Latimer's decision made sense in any shape or form given his extraordinary circumstances. The question is whether or not the courts can look the other way or make exceptions to the law based merely upon their sentiments about he case.
What if Latimer, instead of fighting the courts all the way, had immediately agreed to plead guilty? What if he had said that he was willing to serve the sentence because that is how deeply he cared about his daughter Tracey and the suffering she was going through? What if he had understood that the law cannot make exceptions even under exceptional circumstances, when an issue like protection of the disabled is at stake?
I have a feeling that public sentiment would have been more uniformly on the side of compassion and clemency.
I don't see Latimer as a bad man. I think he was simply wrong, and profoundly unfortunate.
