A Saskatchewan jury has returned a guilty verdict in the high-profile trial of Kim Walker:
A Saskatchewan man was found guilty Friday of second-degree murder in the death of his daughter’s drug-dealing boyfriend.
A Court of Queen’s Bench jury recommended the minimum sentence, life in prison with first eligibility for parole in 10 years, for Kim Walker in the death of James Hayward, 24, on March 17, 2003.
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Walker was charged with first-degree murder in Hayward’s death.
He bled to death in the front room of his house after being shot five times by Walker, once in the back at close range.
Walker testified he didn’t remember the shooting.
Initial public sympathy has been on the side of Walker for reasons that should be obvious to all. A dedicated parent will go to amazing lengths to protect his/her child, particularly when (s)he perceives the child is being preyed upon. To Walker’s credit, he initially tried to save his daughter using standard legal means – most notably obtaining a warrant forcing his daughter into 72 hours of rehab. Unfortunately, Jadah came out of rehab and went right back into the arms of her boyfriend/dealer. Walker’s frustration is understandable, given he had to work within a legal system more likely to arrest HIM for physically intervening in his daughters decisions (e.g. “child abuseâ€) than punish the man helping to perpetuate her habit. Perhaps, as Walker’s testimony implied, the shooting of James Hayward was a blackout – a moment of frustration where the most extreme response seemed to be the only appropriate response.
However, tempting as it may be to whole-heartedly endorse Walker’s tough love, the shooting was still not justified and the circumstances do not warrant any kind of reduced/suspended sentence
- The shooting took place in James Hayward’s home. Walker was an invader which rules out any credible self-defense theory
- Jadah was a willing participant in her drug habit, and clearly chose to be with James Hayward. She went directly to Hayward’s house after being released from rehab and resumed her habit.
- There was no guarantee that Jadah would have stopped (or will continue to cease) her drug habit just because Hayward was no longer in the picture. There are other drug dealers in Saskatchewan and where there’s a will there’s surely a way to find more drugs. This fact mitigates the argument that eliminating Hayward was necessarily a matter of life and death for Jadah.
For this reason a second degree murder conviction is justified. Although many pundits will probably scream about how unfair the system is to protective parents, the jury obviously took Walker’s state of mind into account when deciding to convict on a lesser offense than the original first degree murder charge. Justice was served in this case, although both the Walkers and the Haywards lost in the end.
I am cutting and pasting the main part of an e-mail I sent to John Gormley a few days ago. You may wish to forward it to members of the Kim Walker family rather than publish and/or keep it on the Internet. I do not know their e-mail address. Thanks. It reads as follows:
I found the case of Kim Walker very interesting, in part because it contained many elements common to another case that previously had come to my attention.
A few years ago I learned of the dilemma of a rural Saskatchewan family with a very attractive sixteen-year-old daughter. It seemed that the young girl recently had been diagnosed with minor epilepsy and did not want to go on the related treatment with the prescribed drug, Risperdal. Risperdal is a drug actually used for the treatment of psychotic disorders and it has disfiguring side effects that include significant weight gain, and rigidity and distortion of the facial muscles. As well, she liked to go to parties at which alcohol often was consumed. As a consequence, she was placed in a major psychiatric facility in North Battleford. She was fifteen years old at the time. During the time that she was a patient in the hospital, she met up with a 46-year-old biker from eastern Canada, who convinced her that the adults in her life were not treating her with the level of respect and maturity she deserved. She soon became his girlfriend and wanted to take off with him. From that time forward the young girl and her family had a biker problem on their hands.
Why it was that a fifteen-year-old, whose main problems seemed to be “issues” surrounding adults and alcohol, was placed in a large psychiatric facility I cannot say. However, it looks a bit suspect. I believe, however, that the young girl’s parents initially thought that their daughter would be safe under the care of the Mental Health System.
Why the staff of the North Battleford psychiatric hospital did not intervene when they could see that this girl, as a minor, was being accosted by a middle-aged man is beyond me as well. Why were the wards not segregated in some way, by gender or by age? I am addressing this question to you because you would be familiar with the heath care system, having had parents who worked in it. You would also be familiar, as a lawyer, with the justice system. It seems to me that it was no small coincidence that the biker just happened to be in the hospital for the young girl. I believe that he was sent after her.
I think that one of the main problems in the Kim Walker case is that nobody is allowed to talk about the System in general (and how it works); therefore the real issues are never discussed.
I previously have had two relatively minor encounters with bikers, and believe it, they are terrifying people to be around! Furthermore, where bikers are found, you will also find morphine. Middle-aged men do not normally worm their way into the social circles of teenagers.
I think that the public really needs to witness a thorough disclosure of the circumstances under which these hard as nails characters find their victims of prey.
Hello, J – that is pretty interesting. I do not have direct access to the Walker Family to perhaps they may find it on here. I will contact a couple other people who might be able to make things happen.
It’s hard to gauge how deep the systemic problem is without data. Have you ever come across any statistics concerning what kind of people are admitted to Psych wards in Saskatchewan? In Toronto we have the opposite problem – too many mentally disturbed people end up on the streets begging for change and harassing pedestrians.
put the mother fucker in jail for the rest of his useless life before he shoots someonbe else cause his life isnt going the way he wants!