Beyond Redemption: The People vs Lucas and Bender

H. Graham Rawlinson is a corporate lawyer with the international law
firm Torys in Toronto. He is co-author of The Canadian 100: The 100 Most
Influential Canadians of the 20th Century.

Retired after a long career as a prosecutor in the Manitoba Department
of Justice, John Montgomery unleashes a torrent of pent-up frustration
with the Canadian criminal justice system in this book. On the surface,
he tells the story of the horrific 1973 murder of a young Winnipegger
who had the misfortune of being in the path of a pair of violent
psychopaths, and the trial, imprisonment, and ultimate eligibility for
parole of the killers, Lucas and Bender. But the purpose of the book is
to try to demonstrate how—through the lens of this single
crime—violent offenders are routinely are given far too many rights at
trial, coddled in penal institutions, and released from custody long
before they ought to be.

Montgomery makes no effort to be balanced in his viciously critical
assessment of Canadian justice, and declines the opportunity to even
consider libraries full of studies that show convincingly that a
throw-away-the-key approach for violent offenders does neither the
offender nor society any good. At times, he attacks judges and
politicians who perpetuate the status quo with a barrage of ill-tempered
cheap shots, which hardly make his arguments more convincing. At the
same time, his rant can be a remarkably candid, behind-the-scenes look
at the criminal justice system. And whatever one’s point of view, it
is difficult not to feel some sympathy for the author’s obviously
sincere concern for a system that, in his view, has failed victims of
crime and Canadian society. Policy change, for better or for worse,
often requires equal measures of reason and passion; in this book,
Montgomery has supplied a large dose of the latter.