A man who beat his ex-girlfriend to death with a baseball bat in Bowser in 2021 was given a life sentence with no parole for 25 years.
In the B.C. Supreme Court ruling posted on July 14, Justice Robin Baird said Luciano Mariani's murder of Caroline Bernard was planned and rehearsed for several months before he broke into her home in the early morning hours of Aug. 31 and killed her in her bed, where she lay next to her four-year-old daughter.
Baird said the crime was “extremely violent, utterly appalling, premeditated, and pitiless transgression of the most basic norms of human decency”, in his sentencing of Mariani.
Mariani pleaded guilty in July 2023, but successfully challenged the constitutionality of a criminal code provision which effectively cancelled legal entitlement of first-degree murder convicts to apply for a reduction in their parole ineligibility after 15 years of imprisonment, known as the "faint hope clause".
Baird said, in his sentencing, that there is "nothing disproportionate about the mandatory penalty" for Mariani's actions.
He added that Mariani's crime of "obscene brutality with maximally aggravating features" justified receiving the full penalty.
"The magnitude of the insult and injury that you have inflicted upon our local community is enormous," Baird said. "And first and foremost, you have brutally extinguished the life of a fine young woman who was beloved by all who knew her."
After serving 15 years, Mariani can apply for a reduction in the number of years of imprisonment without eligibility for parole.
