Canada's Harper Government is getting more and more like the...

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Ottawa won't seek clemency for death-row inmate in U.S.
Randy Boswell, CanWest News Service

The Conservative government has ended a long-standing federal policy of automatically seeking clemency for any Canadian facing the death penalty in a foreign country, CanWest News Service has learned.

The decision is likely to seal the fate of Alberta-born Ronald Allen Smith, the only Canadian on death row in the United States, who faces a lethal injection in Montana for killing two men in 1982.
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Canada's sudden reversal follows a CanWest News story published Saturday in which Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer said he has been under pressure from Canadian officials to commute Smith's death sentence, pronounced in 1982 after he admitted murdering two aboriginal Americans -- Harvey Mad Man, 24, and Thomas Running Rabbit, 20 -- during a drunken road trip south of the Canada-U.S. border in 1982.

On Friday, the Department of Foreign Affairs told CanWest News it was backing Smith's bid for clemency because "there is no death penalty in Canada and the government of Canada does not support the death penalty."

The statement added that: "It is the policy of the government of Canada to seek clemency, on humanitarian grounds, for Canadians sentenced to death in foreign countries."

But the government's position changed this week. On Monday, in response to questions about Canada's efforts to secure clemency for Smith and a possible transfer to a Canadian prison, a spokeswoman for Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said "there are no ongoing efforts by our government to seek a commutation of the death penalty for Mr. Smith."

Then, after two days of requests for a clarification of Canada's policy, the Department of Foreign Affairs responded late yesterday with a statement that the government will not, in fact, press the U.S. to save Smith's life. "We are not going to seek clemency in cases in democratic countries, like the United States, where there has been a fair trial," a Foreign Affairs spokesperson stated.

The abrupt change in policy comes at a critical time in the Smith case. His lawyer -- who has exhausted all appeal options at the state level and expects a ruling within months on Smith's final appeal in federal courts -- said last week that Canada's efforts on behalf of his client are probably Smith's best chance to avoid execution.

The U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay of execution this week to a Mississippi inmate on death row until the country's top judges rule on whether the lethal injection method of execution -- used in Montana and numerous other death-penalty states -- constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment."

Yesterday, Schweitzer met with the families of Smith's victims, who have always argued that the Canadian inmate should be executed, regardless of his home country's wishes.

The meeting was arranged after the Montana governor admitted last week he is undecided about whether to commute Smith's sentence because of Canada's appeals.

http://www.canada.com/globaltv/national/story.html?id=e7aaf321-9652-4096-9142-ee27414dacce&k=25145