On This Day in History: December 11

The last execution in Canada

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In 1992 a six-year-old Edmonton girl named Corinne Gustavson was snatched from her front lawn, sexually assaulted, and murdered. The guy who did it is named Clifford Sleigh, and people wanted that motherfucker to pay with his life. But it had been 30 years since Canada had executed anyone.

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: December 11, 1962--

I remember the murder because I live in Calgary, a city in the same province as Edmonton, and because it resulted in my writing being published in a newspaper for the first time. I wrote a letter to the editor of the Calgary Herald, explaining that while this guy was a total piece of shit and yeah I really wanted the fucker to die too, bringing back capital punishment to our nation was not a good idea.

I didn’t use words like shit and fucker in the letter, but the premise of my argument was based on the example of the United States. In summary: Capital punishment is shown not to be a deterrent to committing crimes; due to the lengthy appeals process, it actually costs more to execute someone in the U.S. than to keep them in prison for the rest of their life; it rarely offers the “closure” the victim’s families seek; it is unequally applied to poor and minorities; mistakes get made, and while you can let an innocent person out of prison, you cannot make them undead. You could also argue that a state that executes its citizens, no matter how heinous the crime committed, is breaking the social contract. Continues below …

I expect my Facebook is going to be active with all sorts of pro death penalty dunces today. It would help me survive it if you became a paying subscriber.

But! But! Get rid of all those appeals and make it more efficient! That will save money! Like the way China does it, where the average amount of time spent between sentencing and execution is only two months? You want to live in a country where the government pops caps into criminal asses like it’s the national fucking pastime? No thanks. I’m sure some people want their country to be like Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, or Somalia, where it really is a pastime. Meaning: executions are public. Bring popcorn.

Arthur Lucas was a murdering piece of shit. Hailing from Georgia, he was in Toronto when he killed a police informant from Detroit along with the informant’s common-law wife. He was executed by hanging in Toronto on December 11, 1962. It was the last time capital punishment was used in Canada. The country officially banned the punishment in 1976.

As of this writing (2021), the world has 195 countries, and 54 of those practice capital punishment. Of the 54, only a dozen rate as “very high” on the Human Development Index, which basically means “nice place to live.” Ten of the 12 are in Asia. The other two are Belarus and the good old United States of fuck-yeah-let’s-lethally-inject-this-mentally-disabled-person America.

Clifford Sleigh is rotting in prison. If it was my daughter he killed and he stood in front of me, I’d bash his fucking head in with a rock. But it’s not about me, it’s about what the nation decides is best for all. The nation is supposed to be better than me. In conclusion, please save the pound-me-in-the-ass prison commentary. Rape isn’t funny no matter the victim.

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