McKee challenges life sentence as ‘cruel and unusual punishment’

A 33-year-old man convicted of first-degree murder in the 2019 stabbing death of his father inside their Penetanguishene home wants his life sentence reduced.

Brad McKee, who has been behind bars for five and a half years since the night he killed his father, Bill, argues his mandatory minimum life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years violates his rights under Section 12 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Bill McKee is pictured in this undated photo. (Supplied)Found guilty by a jury of first-degree murder in 2022, McKee is challenging his sentence is cruel and unusual punishment.

His lawyers, Nathan Gorham and Breana Vandebeek, told the court during submissions in a Barrie courtroom that McKee’s mental disorder affected his moral culpability when he stabbed his father in the neck and killed him on February 11, 2019.

The defence says McKee’s distorted perception of reality, including paranoid delusions about doctors also conspiring against him, hurt his defence in a trial in 2022 when McKee told his lawyer at the time, Mary Cremer, not to call one of the doctors to testify that McKee may have been in a state of psychosis at the time of the killing.

“The evidence paints a crystal clear, undeniable, overwhelming picture of a mentally-disordered man who is fighting against his defence by telling his lawyer she cannot present an account of events that he gave to the doctor that would give him a defence,” said Gorham.

“If you believe Mr. McKee on the surface, it appears he was suffering psychotic symptoms which in theory could exempt him from criminal responsibility.”

The jury heard McKee, who had struggled for years with his mental health and attempted suicide several times, believed his parents were conspiring against him and controlling his life. He thought he was being spied on and his computer was hacked.

McKee confined his parents to their bedroom on the night of Bill McKee’s murder, and when his father tried to call 911 in his ensuite bathroom, his son killed him and then stabbed himself repeatedly. Brad McKee told first responders to let him die. He was taken to hospital and recovered from the stab wounds.

Crown attorney Dennis Chronopoulos told the court McKee knew exactly what he did the moment he did it.

“The jury agreed with that. The jury found a subjective intent for murder, the highest level of intent in our criminal justice system,” said Chronopoulos.

The Crown wants Justice Vanessa Christie to uphold McKee’s first-degree murder conviction and life sentence, saying it should be up to the Court of Appeal and parole board to ultimately decide McKee’s fate.

“That subjective intent for murder equates to a high moral culpability; the highest moral culpability. You can’t say that someone had the subjective intent for murder and then find that they had low moral culpability; the two don’t match,” said the Crown.

The defence told the court McKee was not in control of his actions when he killed his father and only snapped out of that state when the blood began spurting from his father’s neck.

Justice Christie is scheduled to make her decision in early September