MANDEL: Will fourth time be the charm for parole-seeking cop killer Clinton Gayle?
· Toronto Sun
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Once again, Toronto cop killer Clinton Junior Gayle will torture his victim’s family as he seeks parole less than two years since his last attempt.
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Next week’s hearing will be his fourth try — will the drug trafficker and career criminal who executed Toronto Police Const. Todd Baylis finally punch his ticket back to sunny Jamaica?
What a travesty of justice that would be.
Gayle, 58, is serving a life sentence for first-degree murder in the cold-blooded June 1994 slaying of Baylis, just 25, and the attempted murder of his partner Mike Leone while the two officers were on routine patrol in a public housing building on Trethewey Dr. The crack dealer didn’t want them to find out that he was on bail, prohibited from having any weapon and under a deportation order that had slipped through the cracks for years, leaving him free to ply his drug trade with impunity.
So he shoved Baylis in the chest, throwing him to the ground. Leone tried to pepper spray him but he fled up a stairwell. Gayle then 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 then Superior Court Justice David Watt.
As Baylis lay on the ground, his gun still holstered, Gayle aimed his gun six inches from his temple and pulled the trigger. He then turned to the injured Leone but luckily, this time his gun jammed and he fled.
Claimed self-defence for decades
For decades, Gayle insisted he only shot them in self-defence — a claim rejected by a trial jury, the Court of Appeal and a faint hope jury.
At his first parole hearing in 2019, 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 after the police attacked him.
That didn’t stop him from being transferred to minimum security at a British Columbia prison.
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At his 2024 hearing, his story had shifted yet again. This time, Gayle said he didn’t want the police to catch him with drugs so he impulsively shot before thinking.
Executing a police officer at close range is hardly an impulsive act.
While he admitted his story remains different than the official version of the murder, he takes full responsibility for taking Baylis’s life because he was carrying a gun and focused on escaping from police.
Would be deported if paroled
Prison staff recommended him for day parole and since there’s an outstanding deportation order, that would mean sending him back to his birthplace — which is exactly where he wants to go.
At his hearing, Gayle told the board he used to be motivated by fast money and status. In prison, his criminal sensibility continued at first, by associating with a gang and possessing weapons, but he came to realize the folly of his ways and is now a changed man — he left the criminal life behind, reads the Bible, is deeply remorseful, etc., etc.
Gayle asked to return to Jamaica to serve out the rest of his life sentence while living with his mom and stepbrother and pursuing job opportunities with relatives.
That would be the “ultimate insult,” Leone has said.
‘Ultimate slap in the face’
“To now use the existence of that deportation order to win his freedom and place himself beyond the reach of the Parole Board of Canada, is deeply offensive,” he wrote in his 2021 victim impact statement. “It is the ultimate slap in the face.”
The parole board denied Gayle’s release and deportation — for now.
“The Board finds that the absence of gradual and structured release in which you would be subject to monitoring and supervision is not sufficient to manage your risk at this time,” the panel wrote.
“Absent from your release plan is a realistic and fulsome understanding of the pressures, stresses and dynamics related to your transition to Jamaica,” the decision continued. “You have not developed a clear understanding or strategies as to how you will manage all of the new, unknown and potentially high risk situations, locations and people that will impact your reintegration.”
Now he’s back to try again. Has Gayle come up with a more convincing plan to satisfy them?