A man walks past the Supreme Court of Canada, June 16, 2023.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
A Mississauga man alleged to be one of Canada’s most prolific killers is seeking permission to argue at the country’s top court that he should not face any homicide charges at all.
Kenneth Law, who is slated to be on trial next year, faces 14 first-degree murder charges and 14 counselling-suicide charges in connection with the deaths of 14 people in Ontario. But according to a new application made to the Supreme Court of Canada, the 59-year-old has asked his lawyers to make immediate interventions on his behalf.
“Mr. Law submits that the Criminal Code categorically distinguishes homicide from suicide,” reads an application for top-court intervenor standing filed Friday by one of his lawyers, Matthew Gourlay. The brief argues that an allegation of “assisting suicide is not murder or manslaughter.”
Authorities who arrested Mr. Law last year alleged that he is responsible for the deaths of people across Ontario, who were in their teens, 20s and 30s, after they purchased items from an online mail-order enterprise.
Prosecutors representing the Attorney-General of Ontario last month first petitioned the Supreme Court to urgently clarify the circumstances under which homicide and counselling suicide may overlap. In a rare application, they urged the court to clear space on its docket right away so as to settle issues of criminal law prior to Mr. Law’s scheduled September, 2025, trial.
The Ontario Court of Appeal ruled in June in a years-old unrelated case that counselling suicide and murder-related charges should not be applied to an accused for the same death. That ruling proposed that courts choose between these charges by testing whether an accused “overbore the victim’s freewill in choosing suicide.”
Because the appellate court’s logic binds lower courts in Ontario into following suit, prosecutors who laid charges against Mr. Law in 2023 saw that ruling as a blow to the murder elements of their two-track case. They are arguing that the Court of Appeal ruling is a legal error that must urgently be overturned.
“The ongoing prosecution of [Mr. Law] underscores the need for clarification on the Court of Appeal’s interpretation of the relationship between the offences of assisting suicide and murder,” Crown lawyers Deborah Krick and Katie Doherty wrote.
The Supreme Court has not announced whether it will agree to the Crown’s request for an expedited hearing.
Mr. Law’s application says he should be part of any hearing that may take place.
Counselling suicide, upon conviction, carries a penalty of up to 14 years in prison, whereas a guilty finding in a murder case is an automatic life sentence. Any Supreme Court ruling that clarifies prosecutions in these realms could have “profound and immediate consequences for the proposed intervener Kenneth Law,” Mr. Gourlay says in his application.
A former chef and engineer, Mr. Law plans to plead not guilty to all charges he faces. His case is currently in its pretrial phases where evidence is shielded under publication bans.
Police have previously alleged that Mr. Law’s businesses traded in toxic chemicals and compressed-gas respiration equipment, allegedly to people who were seeking suicide paraphernalia. Authorities have said that the shipments involved up to 1,200 packages sent to 40 countries. Jurisdictions outside Ontario continue to investigate these shipments.
In the Ontario case, “Mr. Law is not alleged to have been present at any of the deaths,” the filing from Mr. Gourlay reads. He is one of three lawyers with Toronto’s Henein Hutchison Robitaille representing Mr. Law.
“It would impermissibly warp the language of the Criminal Code to assert that someone who provides a toxic substance that another person later voluntarily consumes in another location has actually committed their murder.”
The Ontario Court of Appeal’s June ruling, which was not linked to the Law case, revisited a 2019 case where a suicidal nurse in Toronto injected insulin into herself, her mother and her toddler. Everyone survived but the nurse was convicted of two counts of attempted murder.
On appeal, the nurse’s lawyers successfully argued that jurors should have considered a scenario where she only provided the insulin to her mother, but did not inject it – and whether she should be culpable for a murder-related offence in such circumstances.
Writing for a unanimous three-judge appellate panel, Justice Jonathon George wrote that the crime could have been covered off in the federal laws that condemn the counselling of suicide. He urged courts in the province to apply an either-or logic, and also test whether an accused railroaded someone into taking their life.
“If the jury so concluded, a conviction for attempted murder might be available,” the Ontario Court of Appeal ruling says. “If not, this same conduct would be the aiding of a suicide attempt.”
Lawyers for Mr. Law say he has never been accused of forcing anyone to do anything. “There has been no suggestion that he coerced any of the deceased. However one may feel about Mr. Law’s alleged conduct, these tragic deaths were suicide, not murder.”