Alberta baby-killing verdict discussions echo national infanticide debate

Canadian Press, By: LISA ARROWSMITH, September 27, 2006

WETASKIWIN, Alta. (CP) - It's a small farming community whose high number of auto dealerships has given it a reputation as a good place for a deal on a car.

But the morning after a young local woman was convicted of murdering her newborn baby, debate on the leafy streets of Wetaskiwin, Alta., was over much higher stakes than Ford Vs. Chevy.

"Ten years is not sufficient," said an adamant Gail Doolittle, referring to the sentence handed out to Katrina Effert, 20.

"That's the justice system. We need to give them a chance," she sneered as she loaded her two-year-old daughter Heather into a car seat at a local grocery store.

But at the nearby Wetaskiwin Full Gospel Church, 78-year-old Rev. Kenton Kennett said he expects his congregation to be dismayed.

"I think most of our people will be quite surprised at the severity of the verdict," Kennett said from his office at the church.

"I think most expected it to be smoothed over, a much less severe penalty than that."

It's a debate also playing out across Canada.

Effert's jury chose not to convict her of the lesser crime of infanticide, despite the fact that's how almost all such cases are handled.

Experts disagree on whether Canada should even have such a charge.

"It's an anachronism that should be seriously amended, if not gotten rid of," said Sanjeev Anand, a law professor at the University of Alberta.

But Kirsten Kramar, a University of Winnipeg sociologist and author of a history of infanticide in Canada, said having a lesser crime on the books for such situations is a needed safeguard for women.

"We've recognized for 100 years there are social pressures that cause women to commit those kinds of acts of despair," she said.

Without that law, "there's a danger of women being sent to jail, just like this woman was yesterday."

The wrenching debate played out in Tuesday night's dramatic verdict, which came after 19 hours of deliberation by the eight-woman, four-man jury.

They found Effert guilty of second-degree murder, which carries a life sentence with no possibility of parole for at least 10 years.

"You heartless bastards!" brother Ryan Effert yelled at jury members after they announced their decision.

"I want to see my baby," said father Kim Effert, pleading for a chance to talk to his daughter before she was led off.

"Please don't take her from me."

Six RCMP officers were called to the courthouse in case anything happened.

Effert's family members, sitting on the front porch of their home on a tidy Wetaskiwin street on Wednesday, were still angry that Katrina was convicted of murder instead of infanticide.

"This is a difficult time," said Kim Effert. "Justice was not served."

Anand said many legal experts consider the law on infanticide a holdover from paternalistic 19th-century medicine, when women were considered weaker vessels.

"Women were considered more frail than men, and the act of having a child could unhinge certain women," he said.

Anand said murder legislation allows for the consideration of mitigating circumstances and can accommodate such cases.

Infanticide legislation works against women, he said.

"You're treating women as a lesser human being."

But Kramar said that overstates the case and that social pressures such as disgrace and poverty were as much in the minds of those who wrote the act as hormones.

"The text of the law overstates the physiological motive," she said.

She called Tuesday's verdict "American-style retributive justice."

Rosemary Gartner, a criminologist at the University of Toronto, said women who commit this crime tend to be among society's most vulnerable - young, poor, isolated, often living in "strict circumstances."

For these, the infanticide law may have a place.

"It allows the law to treat (these women) less harshly," she said.

"I do think that women who commit this crime are suffering from a mental disorder that makes them less culpable."

Statistics show Canada has averaged three incidents of infanticide per year since 1994. Yearly totals vary from zero to six, but have remained fairly stable.

For Randi Williams, a mother of two from the nearby community of Millet, there's sympathy for Effert and her family, but also a sense that the justice system needed to be severe in this case.

"I think it's unfortunate for her, but I think somebody has to be the first one to set an example."

Still, there was compassion.

"She obviously needed help and it wasn't there for her," said Williams. "Maybe it was, and she just didn't recognize it."

-With files from Bob Weber in Edmonton