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Full-Text Articles in Disability Law
Mandatory Minimum Sentences And Women With Disabilities, Fiona Sampson
Mandatory Minimum Sentences And Women With Disabilities, Fiona Sampson
Osgoode Hall Law Journal
This article examines the issue of mandatory minimum sentencing from the unique perspective of women with disabilities. Concerns about the discriminatory application of mandatory minimum sentences are outlined and analyzed from a gendered disability perspective, as are concerns about the devaluation of the lives of persons with disabilities through the support of reduced sentences for those convicted of murdering persons with disabilities. This examination makes it clear that the different concerns of women with disabilities are difficult to reconcile, as they mandate contradictory positions with respect to the possible abolition of the sentencing practice. The challenges inherent in the development …
Latimer: Something Ominous Is Happening In The World Of Disabled People, H. Archibald Kaiser
Latimer: Something Ominous Is Happening In The World Of Disabled People, H. Archibald Kaiser
Osgoode Hall Law Journal
Although the Latimer decision breaks no new substantive ground, it has created a furore over the application of the mandatory minimum sentence for murder. This article maintains that, despite the pre-existing need to examine the complex range of issues in mandatory sentences, the Latimer case provides a wholly inapposite base for revisiting this sanction. The Supreme Court of Canada properly rejected the accused's attempt to invoke the defence of necessity, as well as some procedural contentions. The Court also determined that the mandatory minimum sentence for murder was not cruel and unusual punishment as applied to the accused. The reaction …