Law360 Canada (June 8, 2026, 10:52 AM EDT) --

Norman Douglas

Eli Guay was sentenced to hang in 1959 for a planned, merciless killing of an old man who lived in a remote shack outside the city of Sudbury, Ont.

The rumour was that the victim had a lot of money stashed away.

Like almost all killers who are sentenced to death, Guay counted on his lawyers to appeal, and his sentence was commuted to life in prison. He was paroled after serving about 10 years in jail.

So, in 1980, in a courtroom in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., I looked him in the eye, thinking, how many people in Canada have been this close to a man who sat on death row?

I was the prosecutor for his second murder — a gruesome knife attack in broad daylight of a woman on her front lawn witnessed by several neighbours. Actually, there were two knives — the first one broke with the blade inside her body, so he went back in the house for a second knife and came back to finish the job.

Eli and another man, Allan Sweeney, are two reasons I believe in capital punishment. I prosecuted Sweeney for knifing to death a young mother while her children lay sleeping. This happened in Sault Ste. Marie in 1978. He was given a life sentence.

He murdered a second young woman in Ottawa in 1988 while on parole. I went to Ottawa to assist my pal Jimmy Stewart to prosecute him again. Another life sentence.

As far as I know, he has not made parole again.

But after sitting through the parole hearing of Russell Colwell last year, I would not be surprised if Sweeney has been given a third chance to kill again. Colwell was sentenced to life in Sault Ste. Marie in 1988 for the gruesome killing of a 14-year-old girl in her school washroom. You can read about Colwell’s hearing in an earlier column.

He was granted day parole.

Ironically, in 2016, I learned personally what it feels like to be on death row. I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a terminal blood cancer of the bone marrow.

The medical team at the London Regional Cancer Centre doubted this 69-year-old man would survive the stem cell transplant after I failed to respond for the first few days after the operation.

I have now been on parole for 10 years.

In a sense, all of us are living on death row. We all have an expiry date.

The blessing of being told you have a terminal illness is realizing we should now focus on trying to be a blessing to others today. And for each tomorrow we are given.

I am now in Collingwood, Ont., looking forward to being the guest speaker in September for the 2027 fundraiser for Gilda’s Club. The Simcoe Muskoka chapter has raised $800,000 in the past eight years, in large part through the sale of their famous calendars. I will not, ahem, disclothes here why they are so popular.

Each month they feature a photo and bio of a person in the community who, up to the printing, has survived cancer. Those who die that year can be found in the memoriam section. Look for me as Mr. February. Then check the memoriam section to see if I made it to 2028.

There is another category of people on death row — those who have opted for MAID.

In April of this year, I sat at the bedside of a close friend at Campbell House, the hospice in Collingwood.

He was going to die the next day. We talked about life, death and life after death. Then we quietly sang our favourite Scottish ballad, hugged, and he was ready to cross the bar (as in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poignant poem on death).

My first MAID experience was five years ago with another good friend in Stratford, Ont.

He had been paralyzed, confined to a wheelchair for 10 years, nursed at home by his faithful steadfast wife. He had had enough pain and suffering.

If you had asked me my opinion on the moral issue before having those two experiences, I would have had no hesitation in stating that it is wrong legally and morally to help people die. I remember the Morgentaler saga well. Those who believed that the fetus is a human life could never be convinced that abortion was a moral or legal option. And then the debate over Dr. Kevorkian, who served eight years in prison: he assisted people in dying, ignoring the law as it then was.

But having shared the agony of my two friends and their families, and the dignity of their passing, who am I to judge? (Perhaps the title of my next book.)

Now let’s jump briefly into the quagmire of capital punishment. As a realist, I know Canada will never go there, so in some of my earlier two dozen columns for Law360 Canada, I’ve made a case for life sentences without parole.

But all you need to do is google “Richard Speck” and I guarantee you will think twice about the subject.

He’s the monster who broke into a sorority house and bound and gagged nine student nurses who were about to graduate the next month. As they lay on the floor, he dragged them one at a time to another room and killed them while the others waited their turn. One rolled under a bunk bed and hid. Speck came into the room, looked around, miscounted his victims, then left.

He was convicted of murdering eight young women and sentenced to life imprisonment. Even he came up for parole but was denied.

He and his boyfriend made a videotape of the parties they and their buddies had in jail.

He laughed about his killings and chuckled that if the public knew how much fun he was having in prison, they would release him.

Meanwhile, for decades until he finally died of a heart attack, the families of those eight victims had to endure the sickening scenario that he was enjoying his life.

When I publicly debated Eddie Greenspan during my first career as a Crown attorney, his three main arguments against capital punishment do not hold water anymore with the DNA technology we have today.

Perhaps fodder for a future column.

So, dear reader:

Let’s live for others today — realizing we are all on death row can make us better people.

Norman Douglas is a retired criminal court judge with 27 and a half years of experience on the bench. His book, You Be the Judge, was published in December 2023.

The opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the author’s firm, its clients, Law360 Canada, LexisNexis Canada or any of its or their respective affiliates. This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.

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