Crooked in Canada

In July 2006 Keith McCowan was having marital problems, the biggest of which was the fact that his wife was spreading her legs for a crack dealer, and like most husbands whose wife starts trading sex for drugs from her dealer, he took matters into his own hands and tracked the scumbag down who was doing his wife and laid a vicious beating on him, though I think he should have woken the scumbag up before pummelling him into a coma.

Zdezislaw “Jim” Luzny is lucky to believe alive and I don’t condone McCowan’s actions, but when the drug dealing Luzny started f**king around with a customer’s wife, then as far as I’m concerned he is the maker of his own fate and whether he ended up with a bullet in his head, a knife in his chest or ended up in a coma and requiring extensive facial reconstruction, Luzny got exactly what he deserved.

Since the attack McCowan has spent the last 30 months in custody and is currently seeking to be released immediately.

A decision on sentencing will not occur until early in the New Year, but I think the 30 months McCowan has spent in custody should count for something, and I really don’t think 10 years in jail for laying a beating on a scumbag like Luzny is fair given that Luzny got exactly what he deserved, something that didn’t happen to him when he was accused of executing a Winnipeg police informant in 1986. He was cleared in that matter, but ask anybody involved in the murder investigation of Robert Nieman and they’ll tell you that even though Luzny didn’t pull the trigger, he is more than likely the reason Frank Ostrowski (a former hairdresser turned cocaine kingpin) ordered the hit on Nieman after somebody told him that it was Nieman who told cops where he hid his cocaine and drug money.

Somebody had to tell Ostrowski who ratted him out, and word on the street at that time was that it was Luzny who ratted Nieman out in an effort to save his own ass in an unrelated matter (drug debt perhaps) with Ostrowski.

That case was more than twenty years ago, and my memory is vague about it these days, but I do recall a conversation with Winnipeg Blue Bomber fans that were in Regina for the Labour Day Classic during my bartending days. Sure it was gossip, but the consensus was that it was Luzny’s actions that precipitated the execution of Nieman, and I bought into what the drunken revellers were telling me.

My point is that a person like Luzny, a man who plays with fire and has little regard for human life got exactly what he deserved for f**king around with another man’s wife, and sentencing McCowan to 10 years in prison for something any other husband in his place would have done just doesn’t seem fair.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying McCowan shouldn’t be punished for his crime, but mitigating circumstances and the 30 months he has already spent in custody since the attack should be taken into consideration by the judge while he is deciding McCowan’s fate.