Crime fascinates the public. Whether it is watching television and the movies, or reading detective and crime novels, the criminal justice system enticed the public long before the dawn of the Internet. It could be argued that the fictionalized stories and characters portrayed in entertainment were often, and remain, based on real life experiences. For better or worse, society has romanticized crime into a multi-billion dollar industry. It seems that the more brutal the crime, the more attention it garners. Think Jack the Ripper in late nineteenth century London. Or, even closer to home, Clifford Olson in the 1980s and Paul Bernardo in the 1990s.
Crimes of such a violent nature fuel media attention which, invariably, leads to increased public outcry. According to Carolyn Strange, it was sex murders, a small subcategory of murder that often resulted in Capital punishment, that were of particular consequence throughout the period between Confederation and abolition in 1976. At initial glance, sex murder is pretty straightforward. Though there is no legal definition, it is murder committed during the commission of rape or sodomy (pg.6). It was the grotesque nature of the crime that led to the execution of thirty-nine of sixty-one perpetrators. Another thirteen convicted sex murderers’ sentences were commuted to life in prison, while nine successfully appealed their guilty verdict (pg. 18).
Before abolition of the death penalty, approximately 1,500 persons were executed in Canada. With an overall execution rate of 0.026 percent, why are sex murders so consequential in the history of Capital punishment? This crime more often cost the perpetrator their life. As Strange points out, sex murderers were executed at a rate of 63.9 percent, while robbery and burglary murderers were executed at a rate of 54.3 percent, and all other male murderers at a rate of 48 percent (pg. 5). Evidence shows, notwithstanding the heinous nature of the crime, that other factors, such as the victim’s background and a lack of sympathy for the perpetrators, played an overwhelming role in decision making when it came to sentencing. These factors notwithstanding, sex murderers were more likely to be convicted without a recommendation for mercy (which would substitute life imprisonment for a death sentence) and less likely to be granted clemency by the Federal government.
In her consideration of sex murder and the death penalty, Strange explains the interplay and influences of law, politics, and culture on the issues. She describes early attempts to abolish the use of Capital punishment for even the most atrocious of murders. The battle between retentionists and abolitionists is a major theme throughout the book, and these arguments for and against the death penalty are as old as Capital punishment itself. She succinctly traces the inquiries in to the efficacy of Capital punishment and the criminal justice system, including changes to the appeals process for Capital cases, which led to a moratorium on the death penalty through to its abolition.
It was difficult for the public, as well as the authorities, to grasp the atrociousness of sex murder, especially when the victim was a child, disabled, elderly, or the murder involved homosexuality. It was believed the perpetrator was either pure evil or suffered from mental illness. Early attempts to use psychology to understand sexual “deviancy” to explain the motives behind sex murder met with resistance and the thinking of the day was deeply racist. Strange argues that the white, Anglo-Celtic dominated legal system turned to stereotypes based on negative notions of race and ethnicity whereby perpetrators from the “lower races” were unable to control urges regardless of mental capacity (pg. 18-19). Despite the increased use of psychiatry and mental illness by the defence, there continued to be issues between the legal and medical definition of insanity and criminal responsibility. Moreover, this was a factor in determining clemency for the convicted.
Based on extensive archival research, while incorporating history and law with psychology, sociology, anthropology, and neurobiology, Strange has produced an extensive study on the use of Capital punishment in post-Confederation Canada that will long serve as the standard history of the Canadian criminal justice system. It focusses not only on the death penalty for sex murders, but her interdisciplinary approach provides a greater understanding of the history of the criminal justice system and its continual development. The book closely illustrates the role of politics and the law, along with race and ethnicity, class divisions, sexual deviancy and mental illness, as well as the effect of emotional public opinion, on the use of the death penalty. Though Capital punishment was abolished almost forty-four years ago, debate about its use in certain circumstances continues not just in legal and academic circles, but among the general public. Carolyn Strange offers thorough contextual background for any reader wishing to understand our contemporary criminal justice system.
