International human rights bodies have long recommended the abolition of life sentences for children but these punishments remain legal in many countries, including Canada. In 2008, the Supreme Court of Canada recognized the presumption of diminished moral blameworthiness of young people as a constitutional principle of fundamental justice and overturned a law that presumed young people (those under 18) should be sentenced as adults for some serious crimes, including murder. The burden is now on the Crown to prove that a youth sentence would not be of sufficient length to hold the young person accountable for their behaviour. For murder, the only available adult sanction is the mandatory sentence of life.
In this guest lecture, Professor Debra Parkes (UBC Law) discusses the reasoning in reported Canadian cases since 2008 in which the Crown sought a life sentence for a young person convicted of murder. She suggests that these cases raise a number of constitutional rights issues, including potential violations of sections 7, 12, and 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.