Francis Valentine Cuthburt Shortis Revenge Case

Introduction Francis Valentine Cuthburt Shortis came from a wealthy Irish family that had established successful business in cattle dealing. As an only child, Shortis was spoiled by his mother, however, his father thought that his son needed to learn how to be independent. On September 1893, eighteen years old Shortis was sailed to Canada alone on the S.S Laurentian to learn those values (Friedland, 1986, p.3). After almost year Shortis had arrived in Montreal, his mother visited for a month to help her son establish a life in Canada. Shortis was hired to be a private secretary to Louis Simpson, the general manager of the Montreal Cotton Company for a trial of two months. However, Simpson did not renew Shortis’ contract as he did inadequate

Whereas the Crown concentrated on disproving the defence’s insanity plea finding a contradiction in one of the defence’s psychiatrists, Dr. Clarke’s testimony, as Macmaster found Dr. Clarke had used his description of a criminal to describe the term moral imbecile, used to describe Shortis (Friedland, 1986, p.105). On 3 November 1895, the jury found Valentine Shortis guilty for the murders and was sentenced to death by hanging on 3 January 1896 (Friedland, 1986, p.115-117). Although the sentence was to be carried out, Greenshields made a statement stating, “(T)he only thing we now intend doing is to petition the Minister if Justice for commutation of sentence from the death penalty to imprisonment for life” (Friedland, 1986, p.119). Before the sentence was carried out, George Foster, the defence’s solicitor, went to present the petition in Ottawa to the minister of justice, Sir Charles Hibbert Tupper (Friedland, 1986, p.122). A cabinet meeting was held to discuss the petition of Valentine Shortis, a vote was to be made from ten cabinet members on whether to sentence was to be execution or life in prison. The vote was undecided as each side had five votes, therefore another vote was to be held with other cabinet members voting. Speculation of influencing cabinet members to have the petition be approved were thought as each cabinet member were associated with those who were affiliated with wanting Shortis to be given a life sentence such as Shortis’ parents as they may have bribed cabinet members in election funding, and Judge Mathieu, the trial judge, whose brother-in-law was one of the cabinet members may have influenced his vote as Mathieu was in