Court strikes down consecutive life sentences; Quebec mosque shooter has sentence cut

Quebec’s highest court has declared unconstitutional a provision of the Criminal Code that allows for life sentences to be served consecutively, reducing the sentence given to the man who murdered six people in a Quebec City mosque in 2017.

Alexandre Bissonnette, 30, was sentenced in February 2019 to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 40 years.

With today’s decision from the Quebec Court of Appeal, he will be eligible to apply for parole after serving 25 years.

In sentencing Bissonnette, Quebec Superior Court Justice Francois Huot had rewritten the law, which since 2011 has allowed judges to impose consecutive life sentences for multiple murders and stack parole eligibility in blocks of 25 years.

Huot said that amounts to cruel and unusual punishment and settled on a period of 40 years in prison before Bissonnette could apply for parole.

The three-judge Appeal Court panel agreed that the consecutive sentencing provision violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but they decided that Huot erred in rewriting the law to allow for a 40-year period.

They said that with the provision of the Criminal Code invalidated, the sentence must be imposed according to the law as it stood before 2011, meaning Bissonnette can apply for parole after 25 years in prison.

Bissonnette pleaded guilty in March 2018 to six counts of first-degree murder and six of attempted murder. His victims were Mamadou Tanou Barry, 42; Abdelkrim Hassane, 41; Khaled Belkacemi, 60; Aboubaker Thabti, 44; Azzeddine Soufiane, 57; and Ibrahima Barry, 39.

The Canadian Press