Canadian Judge Releases Mother Who Strangled Daughter With Scarf

There is a controversial ruling in Calgary, Canada where Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Sal LoVecchio has released a mother who strangled her daughter Aminat, 14, (shown left) with a scarf despite the fact that he rejected her self-defense claim. Aset Magomadova will not spend a day in jail for the crime.

LoVecchio earlier acquitted Magomadova, 40, of second-degree murder but found her guilty of manslaughter in the death of Aminat. Aminat refused to go to court to be sentenced for assaulting a female teacher at her school in Feb. 2007. A devout Muslim and refugee from Chechnya, Magomadova was in her praying room when she says her daughter came at her with a knife. She says that she grabbed her daughter by her scarf and told her to drop the knife. She said that the strangling was accidental. However, experts found that it would have taken almost three minutes to kill her daughter and the knife had no fingerprints of the daughter.

She was given probation for three years with several conditions, including taking counseling for grief, depression and anger management.

I appreciate that the court clearly felt that there were extenuating circumstances. However, I do not understand how you can reject the self-defense crime and grant probation without a formal insanity finding (which would result in her going to a hospital). Perhaps someone has more information on the case.

Source: Canada.