No, I don't “grieve for the mother”

In 2005, an Alberta woman killed her newborn son.

Katrina Effert, who was 19 at the time, strangled her child with a pair of thong underwear, waited a few hours, threw his corpse over a fence into the neighbor’s yard, lied to police (blaming the child's father), and then eventually confessed.

Two separate juries found Effert guilty of second-degree murder. The first had sentenced her to life in prison. That didn't matter, however, because Effert eventually managed to draw a sympathetic judge who overturned the previous convictions and replaced them with a conviction for infanticide. Queen's Bench Justice Joanne Veit compared the action of strangling an infant to abortion, arguing that because Canadians allow for the former then they surely must be sympathetic to a young mother who commits infanticide while under stress.

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

I'm a Canadian, and I don't grieve for the mother.

I understand post-partum stress can do strange things to a human mind. I can even see how that might translate into murder for someone who is especially young and psychologically unbalanced. Such cases usually lead to infant death through abandonment (such as in a trash bag either outside or hidden somewhere in the mother's house).

Effert's case is different, however, because a) she presumably could have gotten a first-trimester abortion but chose not to, b) she killed the child in an especially vicious and heartless manner, c) she disposed of the body by throwing it over a fence, demonstrating a callousness that must be intentional, and d) she tried to pin the murder on someone else, showing a consciousness of guilt.

She should be serving a long prison term, but for some reason that makes no sense to me, Effert will walk with a suspended sentence despite having been found guilty by two different juries.

Thanks a lot, “Justice” Veit, both for putting words in my mouth (I grieve? I think not) and for allowing a cold-blooded killer to go free without having done much time at all.

I do hope Effert recognizes this reprieve for the gift it is and decides to do good with the rest of her life. It's certainly possible that she might change for the better, thus at least partially mitigating the injustice of her freedom.