It’s one of those you-gotta-read-it-to-believe-it stories, folks.
High school teacher Nicole Doucet Ryan hired a hitman to kill her husband, Mike Ryan, because she “stood to gain several properties, death benefits and a pension. According to the RCMP, Ryan ‘was worth over a million dollars [to Doucet] dead.’”
And it would’ve gone off without a hitch, except for the fact that the man she hired to do the “hit” was actually an undercover cop.
Doucet was arrested, and it looked like a “slam-dunk” case for the prosecution. The evidence against her was enormous:
Doucet allegedly had tried to run her sister over with a car only three years previously. And according to the Factum of the Crown, Doucet was indifferent to collateral damage arising from the assassination of her husband: “[She] appeared to indicate that if it was necessary to kill [her husband’s] girlfriend as well, that would be acceptable to her.”
A forensic report following a psychiatric assessment of Doucet found “avoidant and dependent personality traits,” and also: “discrepancies between her account of events … and statements made to the undercover officer.” According to this report, Doucet “denied that her husband had ever been physically abusive to her or had threatened to kill her.”
So this woman’s basically a monster and should be in jail forever, right?
Not according to the Canadian Supreme Court:
Eight of the nine Justices accepted the unproven contention that Doucet “was the victim of a violent, abusive and controlling husband,” and that “she believed that he would cause her and their daughter serious bodily harm or death and that she had no safe avenue of escape other than having him killed.”
Despite the fact there was no evidence that she was a battered woman, or ever harmed, or ever under threat of being harmed, and even admitted that her husband was never physically abusive or threatened to kill her.
The reason for this decision? Hyperfeminism run amok:
According to this vision, which manifests itself regularly in Canadian family courts, for example, it is understood that when female allegations of domestic violence colour the narrative, even if unsupported by evidence, social-justice considerations may supersede the principle of equality under the law.
If this was a case where the genders were switched, Mike Ryan would have been immediately sentenced to death by moose rape.
But this “battered-woman defense” (for a non-battered woman) has caused the whole case against woman intent on having her husband taken out and reaping the benefits to stop. It’s an abomination of justice—and an example of just how unjust the biased court system has become.
