They killed their three daughters without a trace of regret or remorse. But would do anything, say anything, to give their murderous son a quicker springboard beyond prison walls.

Thirteen-year-old Geeti. Seventeen-year-old Sahar. Nineteen-year-old Zainab. And the first wife in a polygamous Afghan marriage, Rona Amir Mohammad, 58. Their lives were worth nothing when measured against the dishonour they’d brought upon the family. Their crime: violating a strict code of behavior — removing the hijab, consorting with boys, disregarding curfew, pining to be Canadian teenagers. For Rona, the barren wife, having sympathy for the girls, resenting her alienation within the household, spurring the wrath of the woman who’d usurped her.

Drowned in the Rideau Canal by Mohammad, Tooba and Hamed Shafia, for which all received life sentences in 2012, with no parole eligibility for 25 years.

“Even if they come back to life a hundred times, if I have cleaver in my hand, I will cut (them) in pieces,” Mohammad Shafia said on a police tap three weeks after the murders.

In another recorded conversation with his wife and son: “Let’s leave our destiny to God and may God never make me, you or your mother honourless. I don’t accept this dishonour.”

But Hamed, the eldest son — an abusive sibling, a lying and scheming henchman in the murder plot, watching (at least) as his sisters and “aunt” were likely rendered unconscious, then placed in a car that was pushed into the canal outside Kingston — he was his parents’ pride and precious scion, groomed from birth as hereditary patriarch.

Birth when?

That is the question and that is the substance of an application seeking leave to appeal from the Supreme Court of Canada.

You’d think a mother would know when her children were born, most especially the first of the brood. At trial, Tooba Mohammad Yahya never disputed that Hamed came into the world on December 31, 1990, in Afghanistan. Hamed’s lawyer raised no issue about the defendant’s age. So Hamed — 18 when the crimes were committed — was tried and sentenced as an adult.

This is Canada, however, where details matter, regardless of how spurious the claims. And the notorious Shafias now assert that Hamed was actually born December 31, 1991, buttressing their “fresh evidence” submission with documents of dubious provenance, provided by a former employee of the family in Afghanistan, who just happened to discover a “Tazkira” — an Afghan identity document issued in 1995, recording Hamed’s birth date as December 31, 1991. This same employee, nowhere identified, thereafter obtained from the Afghan Ministry of Public Health a “Certificate of Live Birth,” allegedly premised on a check of hospital records — in a country which admits to haphazard and largely unverifiable birth records, particularly from its decades of civil war.

Those documents, along with a form issued by the Ministry of Interior Affairs translating the Tazkira and confirming its information, were examined by the Afghanistan Embassy in Ottawa. A formal letter from the embassy states: “Taken together, the three documents we have reviewed . . . would constitute sufficient proof of identity, and of proof of a birthdate of December 31, 1991. . . Given that documentation systems in Afghanistan are not as sophisticated as those in Canada, and in particular were less sophisticated in the early 1990s, it would be difficult, if not impossible for most citizens of Afghanistan to obtain more reliable proof of their identity using Government of Afghanistan documents. If an individual were to present themselves at our Embassy with these three documents, we would issue them an Afghan passport bearing the date of birth of December 31, 1991.”

With automatic right of appeal for their sentences, this fresh evidence was submitted in a pre-hearing at the Ontario Court of Appeal — and rejected. The Crown pointed out that two passports had been issued to Hamed in 1996 and 2006, indicating he was born in 1990.

While unanimously turning down the jumbo-sized appeal of all four convictions on various submissions last November, the appellate court also specifically found no reason to allow the fresh evidence on Hamed’s age. “When the deceased were killed, Hamed was not a ‘young person,’” Justice David Watt wrote. “He was an adult, properly joined with his parents in a joint trial.”

And that’s what the new appeal, filed this week with the highest court in the land, uses as a launch pad. One more time ‘round the legal mulberry bush.

Not that Hamed Shafia didn’t do it — that train has left the station. But that he should have been sentenced as a minor, though even if 17, the prosecution could have applied for Hamed to be tried as an adult.

In requesting leave to appeal, Hamed’s lawyers maintain that the Ontario Court of Appeal failed to apply the standard test — known as the Palmer test — for admitting fresh evidence.

“The Palmer test for the admission of fresh evidence has been the controlling authority for a generation,” Hamed’s lawyers argue. “If it had been applied by the Court of Appeal for Ontario in this case, the evidence would have been admitted.”

Essentially, the memorandum of argument implies Watt was making it up — reinventing the Palmer test, holding it to a “stringent standard” — to fit a rejection, by asserting fresh evidence must be “compelling,” as distinct from “credible,” thereby ignoring precedents set by appellate courts elsewhere in Canada.

“Both the B.C. Court of Appeal and the Manitoba Court of Appeal have held that Palmer is applicable in precisely these circumstances. The logic is simple: the fact of age is an essential component of the court’s jurisdiction. Once the accused has discharged a tactical burden of adducing some evidence of age, the Crown must prove it, like any element of jurisdiction beyond a reasonable doubt.”

What does this mean in practice?

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An adult convicted of first-degree murder faces life without parole for 25 years. A young offender — a 17-year-old Hamed Shafia — even sentenced as an adult, faces a maximum of life without parole eligibility for 10 years.

In that circumstance, Hamed Shafia, convicted of four first-degree murders, could walk out of prison in five years. When he’d be 31. Or 32.