FIRST READING: Courts keep deciding that stabbing people doesn’t carry ‘intent to kill’

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First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.

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After an altercation with a man outside a Windsor, Ont., daycare in 2022, 30-year-old Malique Calloo pulled an illegal firearm from his waistband and shot his victim 15 times.

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In July, a court declared Calloo guilty of manslaughter, meaning that the magazine of bullets he had discharged at his victim at close range had not carried an “intent to kill.”

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Given the time he’s already spent in pre-trial sentencing, Calloo is expected to be free no later than 2030.

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More recently, Inderdeep Singh Gosal plunged a knife six times into the torso of 37-year-old father Paul Schmidt at a Vancouver Starbucks. Schmidt had confronted Gosal about vaping in front of his daughter, escalating it to a physical fight following an argument.

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The case became infamous due to widely circulated cell phone footage of Schmidt stumbling out of the coffee shop and collapsing motionless on the front patio.

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Again, just last week, a court accepted the defence’s argument that it was manslaughter, not second-degree murder as originally charged. Gosal had stopped taking his schizophrenia medication and had been drinking, so he couldn’t be expected to appreciate that the stabbings would kill Schmidt. The fatal stabbings were an “overreaction due to mental illness.”

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Manslaughter exists in Canadian law for crimes in which an offender caused someone’s violent death but didn’t mean to: A fluke punch in a bar fight, a recklessly fired gun, a tainted drug sale.

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But in one of the more conspicuous trends ensuring lax sentences for Canadian violent criminals, manslaughter is often being applied to homicides where an offender shot or stabbed their victim.

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It was only a few blocks away from the 2023 Paul Schmidt killing that saw a similar case of an offender plunging a knife into the chest of his victim, only for a B.C. court to rule that the action hadn’t been intended to kill.

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In a 2020 incident at the biltmore, a Vancouver low-barrier shelter, 31-year-old Anthony Woods fatally stabbed a man in the building’s elevator who had been confronting him about his disruptive behaviour.

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Woods had been kicking and pounding on doors, and 72-year-old Alex Gortmaker appears to have raised objection with Woods, “slightly pushing him” in the process.

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Woods’ response was to produce a knife, stab Gortmaker in the upper chest, and then shove the man from the elevator where he collapsed and bled to death.

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In October 2024, Judge Reginald Harris would not only accept Woods’ plea that he was guilty only of manslaughter, but granted him a suspended sentence that resulted in his immediate release from custody.