Cop-Killers, Emotion, and Capital Punishment in Moncton, New Brunswick: The Ambrose and Hutchison Case, 1974–5

Abstract

On 13 December 1974, Moncton policemen Corporal Aurèle Bourgeois and Constable Michael O’Leary were kidnapped and murdered, evoking an intense public response of grief and anger against the perpetrators. The funeral for the murdered men and the trial and conviction of Richard Ambrose and James Hutchison for the crime offers an example of how emotions evoked by sensational murders played an important role in the Canadian criminal justice system and debates on capital punishment. Examining the reactions of the police, political figures, and the media, as well as how sympathy was managed at the trial, demonstrates how certain laws aimed to regulate the emotions related to violent crime: accepting expressions of compassion and sadness, but not anger and vengeance. The murders also coincided with a majority federal Liberal government committed to changing the laws surrounding capital punishment. Even though the perpetrators elicited little public sympathy, their case was used as both an opportunity to champion hope and forgiveness in the cause of abolition and an example for retentionist calls for retribution and punishment. This article examines how the grief and anger of one community illustrated the criminal laws designed to regulate emotions in court and outside of it and intersected with the contemporary debates on abolition, highlighting the importance of the grief and anger of policemen and police associations in capital cases and in the debates over the death penalty.