MANDEL: Cop killer seeks parole and a return to Jamaica

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Here he goes again.

Cop killer Clinton Junior Gayle will be trying for parole once more this fall — hoping that this time, after serving 30 years for the murder of Toronto Police Const. Todd Baylis and the attempted murder of his partner, Const. Michael Leone, he will finally see freedom.

And that’ll likely mean a plane ticket back to Jamaica where he should have been deported more than three decades ago — and where his “life sentence” is rendered an unenforceable joke.

Not that he’s doing tough time here in Canada. Lawyer Tim Danson, who represents Leone and Baylis’s family, says that since his last hearing in 2021, the killer has actually been moved from medium to a minimum security prison in British Columbia.

“How the hell he got to minimum is beyond me,” an exasperated Danson said in a phone interview. “Murder, of course, is always horrific. But this was an execution.”

What adds to his outrage is that it seems as if Gayle is being rewarded, despite his backtracking on who fired first and once again, refusing to take responsibility.

On June 16, 1994, the convicted gun-toting crack dealer was plying his trade in the public housing complex on Trethewey Dr. when he ran into the two young officers on routine patrol.

At his first parole hearing in 2019, the then-50-year-old Gayle admitted for the first time he “panicked” by opening fire. Two years later, he flipped back to his original contention that it was self-defence.

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“They attacked me,” he told the panel in 2021. “I agree with everything except the part that I initiated the confrontation and I started shooting first.”

That’s in direct contradiction, of course, with the findings of the jury, the trial judge, his faint hope hearing judge and the court of appeal.

With a two-year-old unexecuted deportation order over his head, Gayle couldn’t risk being arrested. He took off, with the officers in pursuit. He punched Baylis in the chest and pulled out his stolen 9 mm semi-automatic and shot Leone in his shoulder and back. “A matter of millimeters separated Const. Leone from paralysis, if not death,” said the trial judge, then-Superior Court Justice David Watt.

As Baylis lay on the ground with a broken ankle, Gayle placed his gun no more than six inches from his temple and pulled the trigger.

“And Todd’s gun was still strapped in his holster,” Danson says. “Then he went to take out Mike and finish him off and his gun jammed. And that’s the only reason Mike’s alive. We would have had two police officers executed.”

When considering Gayle’s latest bid for release, Danson insists the parole board should have to listen to the audio and hear how he’s repudiated his brief acceptance of responsibility.

The family is also demanding clarity on whether the government intends to enforce his deportation order. “It would be shocking if this fellow gets parole and he’s deported to Jamaica,” their lawyer says.

“The parole board then loses control over him and he becomes Jamaica’s problem.”

As tempting as that might seem — that’s not justice. Here, parole for someone serving a life sentence means supervision for the rest of their days. If they breach, they’re hauled back to prison.

Not so if he’s enjoying the sunshine in his Jamaican birthplace. Effectively, the Toronto cop killer would be home free.

mmandel@postmedia.com