MANDEL: If she's rehabilitated, why is Bathtub Girl killer fighting lawyer licensing hearing?

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No, it’s not too much to ask of someone convicted of murdering their own mother.

In 2003, when she was 15, she and her older sister drowned their alcoholic mother in the bathtub of their Mississauga home after plying her with vodka and Tylenol 3s laced with codeine. The teens then gleefully collected the $133,000 in life insurance and boasted about their sick crime.

Dubbed the Bathtub Girls, their names forever protected by a publication ban under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, they long ago served their 10-year youth sentence for murder.

The younger sister wants a second chance and, good on her, by 2019, she passed her bar exams to be a lawyer. But in her effort to be licensed to practise, she claims she’s been stymied at every turn by the Law Society of Ontario.

Known in court records as AB, she went before a tribunal in April to argue that she should be licensed immediately and they should waive her  “good character” hearing after what she complains have been eight years of “inordinate delay” and abuse of process by the LSO.

“The YCJA (Youth Criminal Justice Act) exists to give youths a second chance without being punished for their mistakes made as children. I was 15 at the time of the offence and am now 37,” she argued in her affidavit. “The LSO is trying to legalize destroying the reputation of any youth before the youth can even begin their career as a lawyer. That is malicious and improper.”

In a decision last month, the independent Law Society Tribunal was sympathetic, but ruled she still must be found of “good character” by the law society before she can be licensed.

The tribunal agreed the 3 1/2-year LSO investigation was “inordinately lengthy,” but AB also contributed to the delay that has followed, and she hasn’t met the high threshold to prove abuse of process. “While AB may quite reasonably perceive the process to be punitive, it is not intended to be. Rather, the good character requirement is intended to protect the public and the reputation of the profession.”

In November 2016, while in her last year of law school, the young mother applied to become a licensed lawyer and responded to a question that has since been removed from the application form: had she been found guilty of an indictable offence under the YCJA and if five years had passed since her sentence was completed.

AB responded honestly that she was convicted in 2005 of murdering her mom, her 10-year sentence was terminated a year early in 2014 for good behaviour and the five years would be up in 2019. That triggered an investigation and in 2020, she was referred to a “good character” hearing, which the LSO explains is to protect the public and the reputation of the legal profession from lawyers who lack integrity.

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In 2023, AB went to court to revoke her permission for the LSO to access her youth record for the hearing after complaining their investigator used it to reveal her conviction to witnesses as she probed them with “gossipy” questions about a book and movie about the crime. In August 2024, Justice Bruce Duncan – the same judge who presided over her trial and sentencing – banned the use of her records, finding the law society couldn’t use any of it because her sentence was done.

It was as if killing her mom had never happened.

The LSO went back to the Divisional Court, which overruled Duncan and sent the issue back to the Ontario Court of Justice to determine if there’s been a “material change in circumstance” that would warrant revoking access to AB’s youth records for her “good character” hearing.

Dizzy yet?

The tribunal found that either way, it lacked the jurisdiction to declare her licensed. So it’s back to scheduling the law society’s “good character” hearing — unless AB continues her legal fight to avoid it.

And if she does – you have to wonder why.

mmandel@postmedia.com