Ottawa, ON woman gets 8 years for killing husband

Husband killer gets 8 years
Compassion for 'well-liked' woman outweighed by violence of crime, judge says during sentencing
By BETH JOHNSTON, SUN MEDIA
The Ottawa Sun

Friends gasped as the judge sent Teresa Pohchoo Craig to jail for eight years for stabbing her sleeping husband to death with a butcher knife. "We love you Teresa," a crying woman said as the 51-year-old was led out of an Ottawa courtroom yesterday morning.

Friends had hoped Craig, who a jury found guilty of manslaughter in the March 2006 killing of her husband Jack Craig, would be sentenced to about two years.

Defence lawyer Richard Morris had argued that Craig was driven to kill by years of emotional abuse at the hands of a domineering and controlling man who physically abused the couple's son.

Judge Robert Maranger said he had compassion for Teresa Craig, for what she endured living with a "mean, disrespectful" man like Jack Craig, but felt an eight-year penitentiary term would help to deter others from similar crimes.

"This was a cruel and monstrous act committed by a fundamentally decent human being," Maranger said.

Paramedics found Jack Craig in the Kemptville mobile home where he lived with his wife and son, critically injured with stab wounds to his chest, after a 911 call from a neighbour's home. She later made a videotaped confession to police.

The Craigs had been married 14 years after meeting through a penpal service. Teresa lived in Malaysia and came to Canada to marry him. The level of support Craig received through her trial was "unprecedented" in his time as a judge, Maranger said.

"Mrs. Craig is a person who is very well-liked and who seems to be easy to like."
But sentencing must be based on the idea that a just society is measured by the value it places on a human life, he said.

Many mitigating factors -- Craig's clean criminal record, good character, diagnosis of depression and post traumatic stress disorder at the time, and her low risk to reoffend -- were outweighed by the violence of the crime, he said.

"There were two, deep penetrating wounds that had to involve plunging the knife with a serious degree of force into the body of Jack Craig, virtually burying the entire blade into his body," Maranger said.

The fact the victim was asleep and "physically defenseless" when he was attacked and that their then-10-year-old son was sleeping 15 feet away further aggravated the circumstances in the judge's mind.

"It is clearly a case where a conditional sentence is inappropriate as a term of imprisonment should be well in excess of two years," he said, prompting gasps from the court benches, which were filled with Teresa Craig's supporters.

A young girl in the second row put her face in her hands and started to cry.

Manslaughter penalties range from a suspended sentence to life in prison.
"In this case, that there was some abuse, is undeniable. However, I cannot equate what occurred in this relationship with the line of cases where battered woman syndrome was applied as a significant mitigating factor," the judge told the court.

"I am very sympathetic to Mrs. Craig, I have compassion for Mrs. Craig, but it would run completely contrary to the evidence heard at this trial to find that the aggravating factors in this case when compared to the mitigating factors don't make this, by definition, a near murder."
Craig has four months credit for time she has already served in jail. She will have to give a sample of her DNA and is prohibited from owning weapons for the rest of her life.