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Reginald John Colpitts (1946 - 1967)
Born in Moncton, New Brunswick on September 9, 1946, Reginald John Colpitts (#2938) had been incarcerated at the BC Penitentiary only a year and ten months when he took his own life on November 24, 1967. He was twenty-one years old.As a child, Reggie Colpitts lived with his adoptive parents and sister in Moncton's northwest end, where he attended Queen Elizabeth Elementary School. He left Queen Elizabeth School in approximately Grade 7, around 1959, and was transferred to a reform school. A schoolmate remembers Colpitts as a troubled youth who was known to have been involved in a series of break-ins and car thefts. As a young teenager he was also notorious for self-harming behaviour, such as driving a safety pin through his own forearm.
From 1962 to 1964 -- between the ages of sixteen and eighteen -- Colpitts served two terms in Dorchester Penitentiary. In September 1964, during the second of these terms, Colpitts was charged with capital murder for the fatal stabbing of a forty-nine year old Dorchester Penitentiary guard, Edwin Masterton. Masterton, a Second World War veteran, had been with the federal maximum-security prison since 1959. He died in the penitentiary hospital shortly after the incident. It was the first time in the history of Dorchester Penitentiary that an officer had been killed in the line of duty.
At the time of Masterton's death Colpitts -- then eighteen years old -- was serving a twelve year sentence for armed robbery. He was not new to the correctional system. Under cross examination during his trial, Colpitts gave the following testimony:
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Q. Now how long have you been in the -- how many times have you been in the -- an inmate at the penitentiary? A. This is the second time. Q. The second time? A. Yes Q. And what are you in for this time? A. Armed robbery. Q. Armed robbery? A. Right. Q. And what was the first time you served penitentiary -- what was that for? A. For escaping gaol, car theft, and break and enter. Q. And had you served any sentence besides penitentiary? A. Yes. Q. And where did you serve these? A. County Gaol. Q. When did you first serve time in the County Gaol? A. 1962. |
On trial for his life
On September 24, 1964, the morning after Edwin Masterton's death, Reginald Colpitts requested a meeting with the RCMP at which he made a series of statements -- some in writing and some of which were tape recorded -- later characterized by Mr. Justice W.F. Spence of the Supreme Court of Canada as "a complete and detailed confession to the crime". At his trial, Colpitts conceded that his confession had been voluntary, but claimed he had been lying when he made it in order "to protect a friend" -- Colpitts claimed he had not killed Masterton himself, but had watched the friend do so. He refused to name his friend (though the Supreme Court of Canada later observed "it could only have been his fellow inmate Westerberg, who had testified as a Crown witness"), but described his motivation for falsely confessing in these terms: "I was going to protect him even to the point of hanging for him until he tried to hang me".In his charge to the jury, Mr. Justice Anthony Robichaud of the New Brunswick Court of Queen's Bench made little secret of his disdain for Colpitts’ claim:
| [T]he Crown prosecutor has asked you -- is it logical to believe that, after having called for the Mounted Police, as you know he did -- if you believe the evidence -- that he would lie, and lie, and lie throughout these written statements, throughout the tape recording, throughout the oral statements, throughout the visit he made to the prison yard when he showed the constables those details of the occurrence. Well, it is for you to say, gentlemen, if it is logical or not. Isn’t it more logical that he would have told the truth on that occasion and that after two months of deliberation he would have concocted the story that he insisted on telling you yesterday? I am not going to give you my opinion on it. You are the men to decide which is the more logical of those two alternatives. You are the twelve men who will decide this. |
Colpitts was convicted at trial, and appealed his conviction to the New Brunswick Court of Appeal. His appeal was dismissed by a majority of two to one.
Appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada
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On June 24, 1965 the Supreme Court of Canada allowed Colpitts' appeal, finding the trial judge had failed to put fairly to the jury Colpitts’ defense that another prisoner had stabbed Masterton. The Court found that the portion of Mr. Justice Robichaud’s charge to the jury in which he suggested the jury choose the "more logical" of two possible interpretations was flawed, since it "could only suggest, and strongly suggest" that they could place no reliance upon the evidence given by the appellant.
In a separate, concurring opinion, Mr. Justice J.R. Cartwright of the Supreme Court emphasized that "[u]nder our system of law a man on trial for his life is entitled to the verdict of a jury which has been accurately and adequately instructed as to the law". The Supreme Court of Canada set aside the judgment of the New Brunswick Court of Appeal and directed that Colpitts be tried again on the charge of capital murder.
In October 1965 Colpitts was tried and again convicted. He lost a second appeal to the New Brunswick Court of Appeal that December. However on January 18, 1966 -- the day he was scheduled to be hanged -- Colpitts, not yet twenty years old, became the Pearson Government’s twentieth consecutive commutation of a death sentence since taking office in April 1963 (see Globe and Mail article at left).
Debate over the death penalty
The timing of Colpitts' commutation request was providential. As the federal Cabinet was considering his request, debate was raging about the future of the death penalty. Indeed, media stories reporting the commutation of Colpitts' death sentence anticipated a free vote on the matter early in Canada's 27th Parliament, which opened on January 18, 1966, the day after Colpitts' reprieve was announced.During his election campaign, Prime Minister Lester Pearson had promised to give high priority to a debate free of party discipline on a proposal to abolish the death penalty. Most parties were split on the issue, and a long, bitter debate was expected. On April 25, 1966, Bill C-168 An Act to Amend the Criminal Code was introduced in the House of Commons. The Act limited the death penalty to those convicted of killing police officers or prison guards.
In the event, the Criminal Code was amended to provide for the death penalty only if the victim was a prison guard or a police officer. (On July 14, 1976 the House of Commons passed Bill C-84 on a free vote, abolishing capital punishment from the Criminal Code and replacing it with a mandatory life sentence without possibility of parole for 25 years for all first-degree murders.)
BC Penitentiary Special Correctional Unit
In late January 1966 Colpitts was transferred from Dorchester to the BC Penitentiary, where he began serving his life sentence. From his arrival at the BC Pen, Colpitts was branded as "one of Canada’s most dangerous inmates", and was segregated in the penitentiary's Special Correctional Unit (SCU) -- at that time a perogative of the Commissioner of Penitentiaries.During the spring of 1967 Colpitts made repeated requests to be transferred from the SCU into the general prison population, but his request was never granted. He became self-destructive, inflicting a series of wounds upon himself during the summer and fall of 1967 and threatening suicide on several occasions.
In November 1967 Colpitts was moved to the three cell "Psychiatric Isolation Wing" of the BC Penitentiary hospital, following an incident in which he penetrated his own eyeball with a piece of wire retrieved from a mattress. There, the young man who had made history the year before by narrowly avoiding the death penalty in the months before its abolition spent ten days before hanging himself with a bed sheet on November 24, 1967.
Coroner's Inquest
Three days after Colpitts' death, on November 28, 1967, a Coroner’s jury was convened in New Westminster by Vancouver Coroner Douglas J. Jack. The jury probed the question of appropriate treatment for depressed and homicidal inmates, but ultimately concluded no blame should attach to any member of the penitentiary staff (the jury declined to make any specific recommendations). When a second twenty-one year old inmate committed suicide three days later, the attention of the media was attracted. Warden Charles DesRosiers advised that no changes in prisoner surveillance or procedure were anticipated in the aftermath of the suicides. In response, on December 2, 1967 the New Westminster Columbian ran an editorial entitled "Suicides in Penitentiaries", in which it noted that with the passing of the bill to limit capital punishment, "the federal government must provide treatment centers not now in existence for 'homicidal' inmates". The Columbian noted "[i]t is not enough to impound them in padded cells and forget them".Reginald Colpitts had entered the New Brunswick correctional system at sixteen years old, and by eighteen was already serving a second penitentiary sentence. He was buried in the BC Penitentiary cemetery on November 30, 1967, survived by his mother, father and sister.
References
- R. v. Colpitts [1965] S.C.R. 739
- "New Trial Ordered", The Globe and Mail, June 25, 1965 p. 3
- "Pearson Cabinet Calls Off Hanging of 20th Killer", The Globe and Mail, January 18, 1966 p. 1
- "Inmate hangs self at pen", New Westminster Columbian, November 25, 1967, p. 2
- "No change in procedure following second suicide", New Westminster Columbian, November 27, 1967, p. 1
- "Suicides in Penitentiaries", New Westminster Columbian, December 2, 1967, p. 6
- Transcript of Coroner's Inquest, November 28, 1967, British Columbia Archives GR 1502, B4946, 505/67
- BC Penitentiary inmate card catalogue - personal archives of A.E. (Tony) Martin, notes taken July 2004
- Personal correspondence with Mr. S. Fisher, schoolmate of Reginald Colpitts
- Prisoners of Isolation: Solitary Confinement in Canada - from Justice Behind the Walls, by UBC law professor Michael Jackson
- The Death Penalty in Canada: Twenty Years of Abolition - Amnesty International
