 The younger of two Mississauga sisters convicted of drugging and drowning their mother in 2003 is seen in a photo posted on the Internet.
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BRAMPTON - One of two sisters who murdered their alcoholic mother will be a free woman June 29, a Brampton courtroom heard Wednesday.
The news came as the 22-year-old woman, wearing a long grey sweater and dark corn rows, appeared for what was supposed to be her annual review. Thanks to a Federal Court of Appeal decision delivered April 7 that addresses youth sentences served in adult jails, the convicted murderer will be on mandatory parole just four years into her 10-year sentence.
She and her older sister, dubbed the “Bathtub Girls” by the media during their 2005 trial, were 15 and 16 years old when they fed their 43-year-old mother booze and Tylenol 3s before drowning her in the bathtub of their Mississauga home in 2003.
Because they were sentenced under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, their names were forever protected and they could serve only up to six years behind bars before conditional release. Under the YCJA, they were granted annual reviews by a judge.
During such a review last year, the older sister was granted community supervision. She would have been granted more freedom had she been waited another year like her younger sister, whose second bid for release was denied last year by Justice Bruce Duncan. Duncan said she needed more counselling.
The younger sister was to make her third bid Wednesday - until the April 7 decision came down.
In the federal appeal case, it was decided that offenders who serve youth sentences in adult jails - as the younger Bathtub Girl continues to do - should have to serve only two-thirds of their custodial sentence. In this case, it’s four of six years before mandatory parole.
For the Bathtub Girls, that four years is up at the end of June. But because the decision doesn’t apply to youth sentences served on conditional releases, such as the one granted for the older sister last June, only the younger sister will benefit.
That said, “the YCJA is a work in progress,” the younger sister’s lawyer, Shedrack Agbakwa, said outside the courtroom. “There may be some legal manoeuvres that might be done.” Agbakwa abandoned his client’s annual review Wednesday and simply asked Duncan to confirm her sentence as it stands in light of the recent decision.
Duncan confirmed it, changing her statutory release date to June 29.
As if to make matters more confusing, because the younger sister was sentenced under the YCJA, she must continue to attend her mandatory annual reviews until the end of her 10-year sentence, but only after she is no longer under the jurisdiction of the National Parole Board, which will be in two years.
tamara.cherry@sunmedia.ca
