Decision on Further Pickton Prosecution the Right One

(Aired on August 6, 2010)

I hope to never know the agony and heartbreak that the victims of Robert Pickton have gone through. But I can empathize with the families of victims attributed to Pickton who will never get the results of a day in court. The Crown this week stayed charges against Pickton involving 20 murders.

This after the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Pickton would not get a new trial on his second-degree murder charges in the trial of the six charges originally laid. The families of many of the victims are upset that the trials aren't going to go ahead. But the reality of it is that, as far as justice being served, it would be largely a waste of time and money.

I don't make that comment lightly. Closure in cases like this is important. But Pickton is already serving the maximum sentence imposed. It's highly unlikely he will ever see outside prison walls again. New convictions won't change anything. Most of these families know the evidence the Crown had against Pickton. They know everything. They only thing they don't have is a conviction in court. But surely justice as a whole is better served by having Crown prosecutors, police investigators and the justice system as a whole spend their time bringing other criminals to justice than by spending time on cases that will result in no change against the criminal charged. I think it makes only common sense.

We know how long it takes to get cases through the court. Would we really want to spend several months tying up the courts again, simply to have someone say Pickton is guilty of 20 more crimes than the six he's already been convicted of? I know this isn't what most of the families want. They want to see justice done in the case of their relative, not just the cases of others charged. But the Crown made the right call this week, sad to say.