Condemned killer sues Ottawa over execution

OTTAWA -- Ronald Smith, the 50-year-old Albertan facing execution in the U.S., is taking the Conservative government to court over its decision not to seek clemency for him from Montana's death row.

Smith, sentenced to death by lethal injection for the 1982 killing of two Native American men, had been supported for more than a decade by Canadian officials in his bid to be spared execution.

But a lawsuit filed by Smith's lawyers yesterday in the Federal Court of Canada argues that the government's "unexpected" reversal last month long-standing foreign policy on the clemency issue violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and has sent as message of "indifference" about Smith's fate to U.S. officials, placing him "in peril for his life and at risk of cruel and unusual treatment."

Three federal cabinet ministers involved in making the decision or defending it in the House of Commons -- Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier and Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day -- are targeted in the suit.

A spokesperson in the justice minister's office did not respond to media requests for comment.

The legal challenge also argues that the government's decision -- communicated in an e-mail to CanWest News Service on Oct. 31 -- was a "direct political reaction" to an earlier CanWest News Service story about Smith's bid for clemency and violates a "constitutionally obligatory" practice of intervening to try to save all Canadians on death row around the world.