If only Medea Lived Today

In Canada, a young mother kills her newborn baby by strangling it
with her underwear, and throws it over the fence into a neighbor’s yard.
The judge on appeal overturns a conviction for second degree murder,
reducing the sentence to a three year sentence suspended, and based her
ruling on the fact that since Canada does not outlaw abortion, this
means that Canadians accept that unwanted pregnancy is onerous.

The child’s name was Rodney.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/story/2011/09/09/edmonton-effert-infanticide-suspended-sentence.html

Queen’s Bench Justice Joanne Veit rejected the Crown’s call for a four-year prison term.

The fact that Canada has no abortion laws reflects that “while many
Canadians undoubtedly view abortion as a less than ideal solution to
unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancy, they generally understand,
accept and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and
childrbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support,”
she writes.

The judge noted that infanticide laws and sentencing guidelines were
not altered when the government made many changes to the Criminal Code
in 2005, which she says shows that Canadians view the law as a “fair
compromise of all the interests involved.”

“Naturally, Canadians are grieved by an infant’s death, especially at
the hands of the infant’s mother, but Canadians also grieve for the
mother.”

I am not sure what the ‘without support’ here means. Other news
reports say that teenagers was living with her parents at the time.

http://www.wetaskiwintimes.com/PrintArticle.aspx?e=3292751

Veit said there are many mitigating factors, including
Effert’s youth, her lack of a prior criminal record, her remorse and
her pro-social lifestyle since the killing.

Effert had been sentenced to life in prison in 2009 after earlier
being convicted by a jury of second-degree murder for strangling her
newborn son, later named Rodney, with a pair of orange thong underwear
and tossing his body over a fence into a neighbour’s yard in April 2005.

However, the Court of Appeal of Alberta quashed the conviction in
May, ruling the jury’s verdict was “unreasonable,” and substituted a
conviction of infanticide.

It was the second time Effert was convicted of second-degree murder
by a jury in the newborn’s death. In 2006, a Wetaskiwin jury found her
guilty, but a new trial was ordered because jurors were given flawed
instructions.

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