Pro-Life News in Brief.

Latimer Is Freed on Appeal

The Appeal Division of the National Parole Board in Canada has released convicted murderer Robert Latimer from his sentence of life in prison and will allow him to live in a halfway house with freedom during the days, according to Canwest News Service. The decision overturns a December parole board decision,

Latimer was convicted in 1994 but not jailed until 2001 when the Canadian Supreme Court upheld his conviction. Latimer was serving a life sentence for placing his 12-year-old daughter Tracy, who was a quadriplegic with cerebral palsy, in his truck and piping in exhaust gas until she died of carbon monoxide poisoning, CanWest News Service reported.

The appeal division made its decision based on what it called Latimer's "low risk to reoffend," according to the Toronto Globe and Mail. The division criticized the parole board's determination that Latimer's lack of remorse meant that he continued to pose a risk to the public.

At the December hearing, Latimer told the parole board, "I still don't feel guilty. It was the right thing to do," the Globe and Mail reported. In its decision, the parole board cited Latimer's "lack of insight," stating, "You appear satisfied with the position that you and only you were able to determine her life or death, describing such decisions as beyond the law."

However, the appeal division decided that Latimer's defense of killing his daughter qualifies as "insight." "The board's determinations in this regard are unreasonable and unsupported," the division ruled, according to Canadian Press. "Your responses at the hearing reveal that you did, in fact, demonstrate insight and were able to explain why you decided to end the life of your daughter 13 years after caring for her."

Pro-lifers and advocates for the disabled in Canada are angered by Latimer's release. "I wonder if the board would have reversed the decision if Tracy had been a non-disabled child," Marie White, chair of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, told the Toronto Star. "When people start thinking it's okay to take the life of a disabled child, that's when we hit the slippery slope."