Kenneth Lee died after he was swarmed, beaten and stabbed in Toronto in 2022.Toronto Police Service/The Canadian Press
The punishments meted out to those who take someone else’s life are not supposed to be seen as measures of the value of that lost life. We should not infer that a life is worth more, for example, if a killer is sentenced to 25 years, as opposed to 10 years, or five years, or just a couple of years of probation. Punishments are supposed to be about the circumstances of a crime, about aggravated and mitigating factors, about the principles of denunciation and distribution, about rehabilitation and retribution, and about public safety. The inherent worth of the lost life, really, has nothing to do with it.
But sentencing guidelines in the Criminal Code have little bearing on how people in real life interpret criminal sentences, which is why many in the Canadian public have been aghast to learn that the eight girls involved in the brutal killing of a homeless man in Toronto in 2022 have all now been sentenced to no further jail time. It feels wrong – unjust and immoral, even – that this innocent man, Kenneth Lee, could be swarmed, beaten and stabbed in the heart, and years later, the girls involved in the fatal encounter would be sentenced only to various forms of probation. Mr. Lee was alive for 59 years; isn’t his life worth more than a mandated support and supervision program and periodic check-ins with a parole officer?
The incident occurred in a downtown parkette in the early hours of Dec. 18, 2022. The girls, who at the time were between the ages of 13 and 16, had been drinking and smoking for hours before they encountered Mr. Lee and his companion, Erika Tong, from whom they tried to steal a bottle of alcohol. As captured by surveillance video, the group of girls swarmed Mr. Lee and attacked him in waves: punching him, kicking him, hitting him with a bag of ice and spitting on him. At one point during the less-than-four-minute encounter, one of the girls brandished a sharp object and stabbed it into Mr. Lee’s chest (the Crown was never able to prove which girl was responsible for the fatal stabbing). A worker from a nearby shelter who witnessed the last moments of the encounter described it as “wolves on top of a piece of meat.” Mr. Lee was later pronounced dead in hospital.
All eight of the girls were initially charged with second-degree murder, though seven ended up pleading to lesser charges of manslaughter and assault. The eighth girl was found guilty of manslaughter by an Ontario Superior Court justice last week and sentenced to three years – the maximum for manslaughter under the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) – though with credit for time served, she will spend no additional time in custody.
Teen girl gets 16 months probation in deadly swarming case
This case was mired by allegations that the girls were subject to illegal strip searches while being held in pre-sentence juvenile detention. A number of the girls sought to have their charges stayed because of the searches, which both Justice David Rose and Justice Philip Campbell concluded were unlawful, but instead of staying their charges, the justices decided that reducing their sentences was the more appropriate remedy. In the end, the girls were sentenced to terms of probation ranging from nine months to two years. One of the girls, who was 13 years old at the time of the attack on Mr. Lee, was re-arrested while out on bail following the alleged stabbing of a man at a Toronto TTC station.
Sentencing principles when it comes to youth are different from when adults are sentenced for the same crimes. The presumption underlying the YCJA is that youth are of “diminished moral blameworthiness or culpability” because their brains are still developing, and thus, the emphasis in sentencing must be on rehabilitation and reintegration, as well as accountability for the offender. It also “should” take into account social norms and harm done to the community, though the primary focus, according to the YCJA, must be on efforts to reform the offender. That’s why many youth offenders, including the girls in this case, are ordered to complete programs like the Intensive Support and Supervision Program (ISSP) instead of incarceration.
The success of these programs are still a matter of debate, however. Overall, rates of youth crime are down since the introduction of the YCJA more than 20 years ago, but they have been creeping up in the last couple of years, including for violent and property crimes. Various studies have been conducted on recidivism rates during and after the completion of ISSPs, but results are mixed. So simply put: we don’t know if these girls will go on to live productive lives after they complete their sentences, or like the one arrested at a TTC station last year, continue engaging in allegedly antisocial and criminal behaviour – despite being spared further incarceration.
We do know, however, that these sorts of sentences convey a profound sense of injustice among those in the public who, rightly or wrongly, see them as a reflection of the value of the stolen life.