Is there in this land a lawyer brave enough to bring Justin Bourque's case to the Supreme Court on a pro bono basis?

Mr. Bourque, 24, is the young man who killed three RCMP officers and wounded two others in a shooting rampage that terrified the city of Moncton last June. On Oct. 31, he was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 75 years. If he lives that long, Mr. Bourque will be 99 before he can become eligible.

Even though it made legal history, this sentence – the harshest punishment since the last hanging on Canadian soil in 1962 – went largely unnoticed because it coincided with the attacks in Quebec and Ottawa.

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This extraordinary sentence results from a "tough on crime" law passed in 2011 by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives. It used to be that 25 years without chance of parole was the maximum jail sentence for first-degree murders. But nowadays, judges can impose consecutive 25-year parole ineligibility periods for multiple murders.

What's especially amazing is that Mr. Bourque's own lawyer, David Lutz, fully agreed with the sentencing, saying the judge had no choice given the way the law is written. (He himself had asked for 50 years without chance of parole.) Moreover, Mr. Lutz sees no reason for appeal, even though many legal scholars believe that such a sentence goes against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which stipulates that no one should be subjected to "cruel and unusual punishment."

The new sentencing law breaks with a long Canadian judicial tradition focused on rehabilitation – a tradition that works, contrary to popular belief, since the recidivism rate for murderers is very low – and leads the country down the path of a U.S.-style justice system based on the primitive principle of retaliation. Locking up an offender and throwing the key in the river is a denial of a basic reality: that some of the worst offenders can change later in life, provided they have a bit of hope and some institutional help. Those who don't take the opportunity are refused parole.

When representing clients accused of grave crimes, defence attorneys often call in a psychiatric expert to testify. Mr. Lutz didn't. The routine psychological evaluation ordered by the judge concluded that Mr. Bourque was fit to stand trial, and he pleaded guilty.

According to his father, the young man's mood abruptly changed a year and a half ago. He became paranoid, aggressive and consumed by rage against authority. After his arrest, he rambled about an invasion by the Chinese and bragged about being in a war. For most of the short trial, he showed no emotion and his lawyer says he was resigned to the idea of spending the rest of his life in jail. But what if a serious, in-depth psychiatric evaluation had diagnosed a psychotic episode?

What if Mr. Bourque, instead of being a loser with a troubled mind, had come from a privileged background? His family would have been able to hire a more combative lawyer and he might have been handed a more humane sentence.

Large law firms sometimes take up interesting legal causes on a voluntary basis. It's good for their public image, but in this case, less so, since killers of police officers are among the most despised of criminals. Still, bringing this sentence up the steps to the Supreme Court would be a public service in a country that used to pride itself on taking a balanced approach to crime and punishment.