Originally published
in the Saturday Observer, Feb. 8, 2003

That night, outfielder Joe Carter hit a home run in the bottom of the ninth, then leapt for storybook joy -- and Blue Jays fans stood in the stands, whistling and drinking for an hour after the game.

The World Series, again.

That night, young, drunk fans took to fighting in the streets. Sean Gallagher and Raymond Burden, both 17, picked a fight with the wrong guy. Jake Dunstan, 22, pulled a handgun and shot Raymond in the chest -- then drew it on Sean, who said he'd fight him if he dropped the gun. Mr. Dunstan fired just the same. The bullet nicked a main artery, and Sean Gallagher bled to death in the streets of Toronto. Moments later, the gunman said: "The only thing that bothers me about this whole thing is it didn't bother me at all. ... A gun makes me feel confident."

That same night -- Oct. 23, 1993 -- Robert Latimer was wondering how to end his daughter's pain.

In his Saskatchewan farmhouse, the sports headlines flashed across the television screen like any other Saturday night.

Jays. Doug Flutie laughing about losing 48-45 to the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Glen Wesley's short-handed goal in the third against the Bruins.

And while the rest of the world watched the World Series, CBC had the Leafs in Tampa.

Hockey Night in Canada was Tracy Latimer's favourite show. She didn't know the score, let alone the teams on the ice, but when the game heated up, she'd kick along, and sometimes laugh as the crowd roared in a close game.

Slowly, she had lost all of this and more to unbearable pain -- couldn't even watch hockey.

That night, Robert Latimer figured it was time her suffering stopped. The next morning, he killed Tracy.

He has now served two years in prison, his initial sentence before the government appealed. He was later condemned to a minimum of 10 years without parole.

Jake Dunstan, the man who gunned down Sean Gallagher in cold blood, got the same sentence. A repeat offender, he was convicted of second-degree murder.

He walked out of the courtroom laughing.

- - -

Robert Latimer stopped giving interviews after he had turned himself in. He had had enough, and complained that folks were more interested about his life in prison than in how the courts had been swayed to believe he could have administered more effective pain management.

He also says reporters are not interested in just how badly the police wanted to secure a conviction -- going so far as to screen potential jurors about their take on mercy killing and asking them if they had disabled children, went to church on Sundays, or believed in abortion.

And he feels no one has ever done a good job describing his girl's true condition.

While he doesn't give conventional interviews, Robert Latimer has kept in touch informally with the Citizen off and on over the past year, talking about his life in prison and his quest for the courts to disclose the name of the drug they say he could have administered. Fact is, they have never identified the drug -- and have refused to do so even now, long after his conviction.

He doesn't complain about life in Unit Five of Alberta's Bowden Institution, a maximum-security prison. "It's pretty good. There's always someone in worse shape. ... Things aren't that drastic."

Inmates don't mess with the celebrity prisoner; neither do the guards.

His time in the gym has left him trim, and he's landed a job at the prison canteen, selling tobacco ($8.30 a pouch), pop and chocolate bars to inmates. There's plenty of time to write letters, and he sometimes gets private, week-long visits with his wife Laura.

As a rule, he doesn't talk publicly about his three remaining children. "We've avoided talking about family life. The kids have had enough."

He now runs the family farm over the phone. Set off Highway 29 a half-hour's drive from the North Saskatchewan River, it's the only other home he's had. His father purchased the 1,200-acre farm in 1948, and later sold it to him. He grows canola and wheat, and like every prairie farmer, hopes for a good yield.

He now gets a morning paper -- something he never had at his isolated farm. And he watches a lot of television. He likes Frasier, even if they are mostly repeats: He gets a kick out of the tribulations of the pompous psychiatrist, Dr. Frasier Crane. The radio advice show takes his mind off his firm belief that the courts made a mistake.

He said the case was a "big game," in which the winners were the lawyers and the religious right. "They made great strides.

"This was an issue about a nation's morals."

To this day he doesn't think he did anything wrong.

In January 2001, the Supreme Court of Canada rejected his argument that he killed out of necessity. The court said he could have limited Tracy's pain with more effective medication. But he says doctors only prescribed liquid Tylenol for fear that more powerful drugs would have numbed her reflexes, impeding her ability to swallow.

In her young, tormented life, she had survived extensive operations. Now, doctors were suggesting a major hip reconstruction and inserting a feeding tube.

The thought of more surgery was too much to bear for Robert Latimer.

"It was something too horrible to imagine. ... People aren't that sadistic. The medical treatment was too much. Nobody in their right mind would willingly put a child through that.

"We wanted her out of pain, and we were unable to endorse someone cutting off the top of her leg bone, and cutting a feeding tube into her stomach.

"What I did was the right thing to do. ... The courts have been misled.

"Just because the federal justice minister and the Ontario justice minister encouraged these courts findings doesn't make them right, just harder to overturn," he says.

In court, a series of intervenors, ranging from the federal government to advocates for the disabled to religious groups, warned it would be 'open season' on the disabled if he wasn't punished.

Don Danbrook, who is disabled and has been a member of the Canadian Paraplegic Association since 1983, is an adamant supporter of Robert Latimer, his uncle.

"I know of CPA members that oppose Bob and I know other members that support him," Mr. Danbrook wrote in a recent letter to the United Church of Canada, which has been sympathetic to Mr. Latimer's plight, according to Mr. Danbrook. "In my opinion, the media has unduly influenced the minds of these opponents. It is not surprising; reporters love sensational stories."

In the past couple of years, he said two close friends, both quadriplegics who also supported Robert Latimer, died; their breathing machines had been turned off.

"Their lives were not ended because they were disabled. Their lives were ended because it was the compassionate thing to do. The same is true of Tracy Latimer. It is called euthanasia."

- - -

In the case against Robert Latimer, 12-year-old Tracy was described as happy girl who liked to play the radio and go to the circus.

That portrayal was way off: Tracy was anything but happy, particularly in the months leading to her death, Mr. Latimer insists.

Born with severe cerebral palsy, she couldn't walk or talk. She had the mind of a young child and was spoonfed all her life. She had seizures, beginning moments after her birth on Nov. 23, 1980. At 12, she weighed less than 40 pounds and wore diapers.

Her pain, at times, was unbearable. Robert Latimer would rock her on his knee for hours at a time, trying to comfort her. Her back, straightened with surgically implanted steel rods, was as stiff as plywood, he says.

For 12 years, he watched her condition get worse. There were more operations -- "salvage surgeries," as they put it.

The cerebral palsy had strangled her muscles and doctors fought back. She had had several operations and her family doctor said she'd need surgery off and on for the rest of her life. Some of the operations she had already undergone lasted up to nine hours.

She had a dislocated hip, believed to have been caused by the two steel rods in her back. Her left chest was twisting in towards her spine. Her lungs were constricted. She regularly suffered from bronchitis. Her stomach was constricted. At times, she could barely swallow. Her rigid back left her with pressure sores at the base of her spine.

It hurt to move; even a bath was painful.

And because swallowing was hard, she often had vomiting episodes that went on for months at a time. On those occasions, it was Robert who bathed her, again and again. Never complained.

The courts said the Latimers could have placed Tracy in a group home. But that was the last thing Robert Latimer wanted. He didn't consider her a burden.

- - -

On the morning of Sunday, Oct. 24, 1993, while his wife and other children were at church, Robert Latimer propped his daughter up in the cab of the family pickup truck, then rigged up a hose and piped in exhaust.

He stood by, ready to stop the engine if she started crying. She didn't, and her father watched as the windows fogged up.

He felt happier for her -- said it was the best he could do for his first-born child.

Then he lied about it.

Much was made of how he misled the investigation, but he says he was buying time so his family could have a funeral in private.

"As important as it was to the government to keep her going, however possible, it was more important to us that Tracy's life ended at home, not in a hospital, and not in the middle of an operation. She had had enough surgery and all that comes with it."

Robert Latimer's last hope is to ask the federal government for clemency, under the rarely granted Royal Prerogative of Mercy, which may be authorized by cabinet.

He has overwhelming support for such an appeal: Thousands of people have come forward wanting to help free him. They write letters, hold vigils, even offer to take his place in prison.

But some of his supporters are now questioning why he hasn't yet filed for clemency. Some say he may wait until a new government is voted into power.

"I don't think there's any favourable people in the government," he says. "They've never done anything to help me."

He is also waiting for courts to disclose the name of the mystery drug they say he could have given Tracy. That, he says, is the most crucial part of the court's ruling, and "should be exposed as wrong." He has even put up a reward of $5,000 for the person who finds out what that drug is.

Robert Latimer confessed to killing his daughter and has never complained about life in prison; he says it's "not so bad."

But make no mistake. He is angry: "I do not accept the judgment that her death was a crime, nor do the majority of Canadians."

The killing of Tracy Latimer has been in the news for 10 years now; the murder of Sean Gallagher, the teen gunned down the night the Jays won the World Series, has been all but forgotten for most.

The motives behind the two killings were wildly different, and the fact that the killers in each case were handed the same sentence would be startling to many. Others would say that the crimes are comparable in that both victims were defenceless.

But in both cases, the victims' families considered the sentence wrong.

The Gallaghers said their lives had been hell since the killing; no sentence would be too hard for what Jake Dunstan did to their boy. "It takes no courage for a coward to raise a gun to a defenceless person and in one moment, destroy so many lives," Sean Gallagher's mother wrote in her victim-impact statement.

On the stand, Robert Latimer's wife said, "Whatever hell they put him through will not begin to match the hell that our little girl went through."

© The Ottawa Citizen 2008