At a court in Newmarket, north of Toronto, prosecutors said they did not believe they had a viable path towards murder convictions.<\/p>\n
Law stood in a semi-enclosed area reserved for defendants, flanked by his three defence lawyers, and said \u201cI plead guilty\u201d to aiding the suicide of 14 people in Canada.<\/p>\n
Sentencing will be determined at a separate hearing, likely in September, when the court will hear victim impact statements.<\/p>\n
Legal experts note that aiding suicide is a serious crime and Law could receive a sentence of 10 to 20 years\u2019 imprisonment.<\/p>\n
After the guilty pleas were entered, prosecutors began reading an \u201cagreed statement of facts\u201d, a roughly 60-page document that detailed how Law shipped material for suicide across Canada and abroad, often for about $80.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors recounted how people, after taking their own lives, were often found by family members with an open package of Law\u2019s near their body.<\/p>\n
\u2018Angry\u2019<\/p>\n
News that he will not stand trial for murder in Canada came as a disappointment to some families.<\/p>\n
David Parfett\u2019s son Thomas was 22 when he ended his life in 2021 with materials supplied by Law.<\/p>\n
Now an advocate for more rigorous legislation to confront online spaces that guide people toward harm, Parfett told AFP that Canadian authorities were missing an opportunity to establish the gravity of Law\u2019s conduct.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf [Law] hadn\u2019t been offering detailed instructions about how to take your own life, then the chances are my son would still be here. So again, for me, it\u2019s murder,\u201d Parfett said.<\/p>\n
David Parfett’s late son Tom committed suicide using materials supplied by Law. Photo \/ AFP<\/p>\n
In the agreed statement of facts, Law took responsibility for 79 deaths in Britain.<\/p>\n
Britain\u2019s National Crime Agency confirmed in a statement that Law will not face additional prosecution, but that the British deaths will be considered during sentencing in Canada.<\/p>\n
A joint statement by the NCA and Britain\u2019s prosecution service said the agencies had explained their decision to not prosecute Law \u201cin detail to the victims and their families.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parfett said: \u201cI am angry, but I am not surprised\u201d.<\/p>\n
He reiterated the families rebuffed calls for a UK public inquiry. \u201cIf our own country will not put anyone on trial for these deaths, the very least it can do is hold a proper inquiry into how they were allowed to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Healing\u2019<\/p>\n
Kim Prosser\u2019s son Ashtyn took his own life in 2023, weeks before Law\u2019s arrest. Law pleaded guilty Friday to aiding Ashtyn\u2019s suicide.<\/p>\n
Prosser told AFP of the painful three years since her son\u2019s death on March 30, 2023.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be at the courthouse on Friday and to sit there … it\u2019s a beginning to another chapter of this process of healing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
A key issue facing prosecutors was whether the alleged conduct could amount to both counselling suicide and murder.<\/p>\n
Dalhousie University law professor Robert Currie told AFP that Law\u2019s prosecutors were watching a separate case before the Supreme Court, hoping Canada\u2019s top judges would offer clarity on the issue.<\/p>\n
But the Supreme Court left that question unanswered, and prosecutors doubted they could secure murder convictions against Law, Currie said.<\/p>\n
– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At a court in Newmarket, north of Toronto, prosecutors said they did not believe they had a viable…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[161223,132929,13312,1873,6694,113068,65777,6183,1872,4999,3368,42,8454,230366,807,8307,103868,4275,43,1118,230367,384,3373,3367,26481,3235,8911,24248,40,38,41,39,1299,1533,80],"class_list":["post-452788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-aided","tag-aiding","tag-canadian","tag-charges","tag-countries","tag-counts","tag-distressed","tag-dozens","tag-face","tag-friday","tag-guilty","tag-headlines","tag-including","tag-kenneth","tag-kiwis","tag-law","tag-lethal","tag-murder","tag-news","tag-of","tag-packages","tag-people","tag-pleaded","tag-pleads","tag-prosecutors","tag-sold","tag-suicide","tag-suicides","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-who","tag-will","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}