Canada abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes...

Canada abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes in 1976 and for military offenses on December 10, 1998. The last execution was in 1962. In 1995, Canada's then Justice Minister, Allan Rock, agreed to hand over two young men, Sebastian Burns (22) and Atif Rafay (23), to Washington State authorities without any conditions. (see 1999 Report). The case is believed to be the first time Canadian courts have dealt with the extradition of Canadian nationals to the United States to face the death penalty. In the past, Canada has extradited Americans facing the death penalty in their own country. Most notably in 1991, following a close 4-3 decision by the Supreme Court of Canada, Charles Ng was extradited to the U.S. He had been convicted the month before of 11 murders in California. Sebastian Burns and Atif Rafay are two young British Columbian men accused of bludgeoning Rafay's parents and mentally handicapped sister to death with a baseball bat at the family home in Bellevue, Washington, in July 1994. In an RCMP undercover investigation after Burns and Rafay returned to Canada, they confessed they had planned the murder to collect a family insurance policy worth $400,000. The two boys, who were 18 at the time Rafay's family died, were then arrested in B.C. In Washington, the penalties for this crime are either death or life imprisonment without parole. Under a Canada-U.S. extradition treaty, either country can seek assurances against the death penalty, but it is not mandatory. Former Justice Minister Allan Rock refused to seek such a guarantee saying he feared Canada would become a "safe haven" for criminals fleeing the death penalty in other countries. But the B.C. Court of Appeal disagreed in its June 1997 decision and ruled that Allan Rock was wrong to approve the unconditional surrender of the two boys to an American state where they could be put to death. It claimed that sending Canadians to the United States without protecting them against execution would be a violation of a Charter of Rights guarantee for all citizens to have the right to "enter, remain in, and leave Canada." Mr. Rock, in authorizing the extradition, "appears to have only given lip service to a fundamentally important aspect of Canadian policy, namely that we have decided through our elected representatives that we will not put our killers to death," wrote B.C. Justice Ian Donald.