By law, the punishment for first-degree murder is an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years. Or it used to be.

Now, two B.C. Supreme Court judges have single-handedly rewritten the law.

The case revolved around a ­particularly brutal murder. In August 2021, Luciano Mariani broke into the home of his former ­girlfriend, Caroline Bernard, and beat her to death with a baseball bat as she lay sleeping next to her four-year-old ­daughter.

Mariani pleaded guilty but petitioned the court to remove the automatic life sentence. Specifically, his lawyers argued that the refusal of parole for 25 years ­constituted cruel and unusual ­punishment.

They maintained that not all ­first-degree murders are the same, and that a one-size-fits-all rule was unfair.

At Mariani’s trial in January, ­Justice David Crossin found the denial of parole for 25 years created “grossly ­disproportionate” sentences for some offenders.

Crown prosecutors........

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