Overview
On 12 March 1976 Calgary police officer Allan Keith Harrison was shot and killed following a robbery at the Inglewood Credit Union. By the end of the year, Janise Marie Gamble, a twenty-one year-old girl from Peterborough, Ontario, had been convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to the mandatory twenty-five to life. It was clear that Gamble had not fired the shot that killed Harrison, but it was less clear whether she had participated in the robbery that had led to his murder.
In Unlucky to the End Richard Pound provides a detailed and thought-provoking examination of the circumstances of the robbery, the subsequent flight of the suspects and murder of the policeman, as well as the hostage scene that led to the death of one of the robbers. He uses transcripts from the Calgary trial to explore Gamble's conviction and details the efforts that, after fourteen years in the desolate Kingston Prison for Women, finally led to her parole.
Pound argues that Gamble's first degree murder sentence was based on legislation not in force at the time the crime was committed and resulted in a much harsher sentence than would have applied under the existing law. The ongoing enforcement of that sentence violated the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment contained in the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. Gamble's story is a searing account of an abusive relationship and its tragic result.
From the book:
"I didn't get a chance ... They asked me if she was so afraid of this man, why didn't she leave him? If you had someone telling you that you were the only hope in the world that they had, could you walk away from something like that? Especially someone you in church married and said that I vow that I will help you whether it's good or it's bad? He hadn't had Christmas since he was eleven. Could you leave someone like that when he really needed you? I couldn't. I couldn't. It wasn't a case of right or wrong then with me. I wasn't thinking that. All I was thinking was need and devotion … He was always the man I loved and the man I married, the man that wanted kids, the man that tried to make it but just never had any background to base it on. I love him still today for what he was."
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