It is a victory, first, for the law, that the plain sense of the statutes should not be subverted by misty-eyed juries and misguided judges. The minimum sentence in law for second- degree murder is life imprisonment, with eligibility for parole after 10 years. The judge and jury in Mr. Latimer's case, having found him guilty as charged, had no business pretending otherwise, as the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal has now ruled.

Second, it is a victory for the notion of culpability, that people who do bad things should be held to account for their misdeeds. Ours is an age that seems unwilling to stick by this principle, preferring to measure justice by our personal feelings toward those involved.

Where the victims are alive, or have appealing people to plead their case, we are ready to cry vengeance, and hang the rights of the accused. But where the victim has no voice, while her killer wears a mask of kindness -- where the one is at best a memory while the other is the breathing presence of sorrowful humanity -- there we find for the one who shows up. There were no reporters to ask Tracy's opinion of the sentence, or to comment on her stoic resolve. Of her, we have only a body, and a name, and the record of a brief life.

That is her victory, the third in this case: The vindication of life. Life unqualified, life without reservation, the life that is our gift, our right and our duty, the universal fact of being before which all differences fail. Each one of us is in this respect the equal of every other; no one may presume to judge the value of another's life. This would hardly need saying, did we not live in a culture that, more and more, has come to worship death.

Who are our heroes, the moral templates of the age? They are those who, one way or another, chose death: Robert Latimer, Sue Rodriguez, Nancy Morrison. The law condemns the taking of human life, and all have challenged the law, with varying degrees of success. They aren't bad people, in any conventional sense. They apparently acted from the highest motives. Should we not have made an exception in each case? And as the exceptions mount, we are compiling an ever lengthening list of the people it is permissible to kill.

Start with the plainly suicidal, such as Ms. Rodriguez. There was no mistaking her intent: Yet, terminally ill as she was, she was unable to take her own life. Should not someone, her supporters asked, be permitted to kill her? But then what of those who are not only unable to kill themselves, but unable to form the intent to do so? That was the dilemma facing Dr. Morrison, a Halifax respirologist, in the case of Paul Mills. Mr. Mills, already near death from cancer, was having difficulty breathing and in obvious pain, notwithstanding heavy doses of narcotics. Should she not, her supporters ask, have been permitted to kill him?

So: We will kill you if you want us to, and we will kill you if you would have wanted us to. Should we really be surprised, then, to come across the case of Michael Sawatzky, the 79-year-old Manitoba man whose doctors put a do not resuscitate order on his chart over the express objections of his wife?

Mr. Sawatzky, though he has had several strokes and suffers from advanced Parkinson's disease, is hardly at death's door. He is apparently alert, able to communicate with his wife, and takes from life what enjoyment he can. Still he must literally beg his doctors not to let him die. For you see, in their professional opinion, his life is not worth living.

Indeed, there are reports of other cases in Manitoba where DNR orders were issued without either patients or their families even being told. In the culture of death, they are better off dead.

That is the moral climate in which Mr. Latimer operated. He may well believe that in taking Tracy's life he acted out of compassion. But he could only believe that if he also, at some level, believed her life was of lesser value than -- well, than his.

Hence the justice of his sentence: Not in spite of his apparent moral confusion, but because of it, as part of the teaching task of the law.

The wise among us warn us not to see the world too starkly, in terms of pure absolutes.

Just so. We must be able to discern all shades of grey, including black.