National Post editorial board

National Post editorial board: Murder is murder, psychosis is psychosis

National Post editorial board September 14, 2010 – 8:00 am

This month, the Ontario Court of Appeal will decide if a mother on trial for killing her infant child can employ a defence of post-partum depression, and be sentenced to the lesser crime of infanticide as a result. Regardless how the case is decided, it raises the troubling question of why, under Canadian criminal law, infanticide is defined as a lesser crime than murder.

Without a doubt, post-partum depression and its more serious variant, post-partum psychosis, are real and serious mental health problems, the latter condition particularly so. However, there is no reason why these need to be treated differently from any other form of psychological impairment, or madness, recognized as mitigating factors in criminal cases. If a woman is so incapacitated by one of these conditions that she cannot be held responsible for her actions, then her defence should be the general one available to all those who plead not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder. Or, if convicted, her condition could be introduced at the sentencing phase under the general procedures available to all convicted criminals. There is no need to classify her condition by reference to her status as a woman or parent.

Moreover, the nation has long outgrown the antiquated thinking behind making the notion that a baby’s death at a mother’s hands is a less serious crime than ordinary homicide. In a society that spends over a billion dollars a year on neonatal care to keep struggling infants alive — and which does not hesitate to remove infants from parental custody if they are in danger of harm — it is incongruous to treat “infanticide” as a crime punishable by a maximum of just five years in prison.

Women and mothers should be treated like all other criminals. And the lives of babies should be respected as much as those of other victims. Perhaps, by drawing attention to the obsolete nature of the law in its current form, the case before the Ontario Court of Appeal will create an opportunity to spur reform.

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Commentary by the Ottawa Mens Centre

The Ontario Court of Appeal is guaranteed to allow the defence of post-partum depression.

The most aggressive feminist lawyers are appointed to the judiciary to satisfy the extreme feminist lobby group. The judges who make the most anti-male decisions are appointed to the Court of Appeal.

The judges on the Court of Appeal who demonstrate the greatest bias against men and for women are appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada.

The judge with the worst record of anti-male pro-female decisions is the Madam Justice Feldman.

If Feldman is on this appeal, we can be guaranteed to read exactly what is written in the textbooks of feminist studies that is mandatory reading by those studying feminist law and child protection.

The Ontario Court of Appeal has an outrageous ratio of anti-male decisions that it acts as a deterrent towards

At the end of the day, the end result is that the Ontario Court of Appeal is an instrument of injustice and an enforcer of the unofficial policy of Male Gender Apartheid and the war on men that removes from men their legal rights.

If you want proof, just check out the research by Peter Roscoe, that shows in particular that costs, orders are made against men for women at a ratio that makes it very clear, a man has a remote chance of success on an issue at the Court of Appeal but if he does have that success, he will be hit with a costs order.

The Ontario Court of Appeal make no secret of their decision to penalize men who are successful on appeal. When appeals are settled out of the courtroom and in judges chambers, in conferences, those unreported secret decisions invariably have males who win issues paying outragious costs to penalize them for having the audacity of appealing an anti-male decision.

What's the solution? We need mental health and personality screening for judges before they are hired and on an annual basis and upon complaints which presently are impossible to make, the Judicial council is for judges by judges and an insult to the principles of fundamental and natural justice.

The Criminal Code is in dire need of revision when it comes to the MURDER OF INFANTS who are human beings, just because they are hours days weeks months or years old does not make them less human beings, the younger they are the more responsibility a parent has to protect their lives.

The murder of a child, the murder of a newly born infant requires a deterrent that is equal to that of the murder of an adult. If that is the case, then why not have a decreasing sentencing guideline that has the minimum sentence for the oldest victim?

So, the sentencing is all out of wack, it does not make sense, it does not add up.

The criminal code already allows for insanity defenses, women who kill infants may well be suffering a mental health problem that they cannot control, but, did they know it was wrong? Just how aware were they? Just how serious was their mental health problem? Fact is, at least 30% of our jail population has a mental health problem and virtually none of them got any break in jail sentence because they had a mental health problem. That's another problem.

The question of insanity is to be determined at trial and the length of the sentence for the murder of an infant needs to be at the judges discretion, which is something our politicians wont like because of the private jail lobby group who want to fill our jails with ever more prisoners for longer sentences that has no positive effect on crime reduction.

Our politicians need to remember just how much they are paying the judiciary to have highly experienced judges, and to start a common sense process of dismantling the incredibly strict sentencing guidelines that have minimum sentences and allow judges, to use their discretion which is supposedly what they are paid to do.

Fact is women suffer mental health problems at a rate several times that of men. That’s a taboo subject according to the most crazy group of human beings, the extreme feminists with a pathological hatred of men, that is a symptom their underlying mental health and or personality disorders.

Post Partum “depression” is not an accurate description, the name PPD diverts attention from the fact that prior to pregnancy there was already in existence, an underlying mental health problem in around 95% of the cases.

The Edinburgh University came up with a survey that accurately predicted a woman’s chances of getting PPD, but those same questions reveal that most probably, there already existed an underlying problem.

You can’t just blame it solely on “hormones” , “out of wack”, pregnancy , childbirth are what are called “stressors”, extreme sleep deprivation will cause any person male or female to “loose it” and suffer “depression”.

It’s those “stressors” of childbirth that trigger an explosion of that underlying mental health problem and insanity has always been a criminal defense.

Bottom line, Post Partum is simply a description of a preexisting mental illness.