This posting raises a very interesting question, nothing to do with
aviation but everything to do with what we do about a person who makes a
mistake, who knows what he should do, which he has every intention of
doing, which he has done many times before without error but which he fails
to do on one occasion resulting in tragedy.

What is to be gained by punishing him by putting him in prison? What useful
purpose does it serve?

Did it reduce the chance of him doing the same thing again? No of course it
did not, the result of his failure saw to that.
Did it encourage others to take more care? It might except in this case
there appears to be no intention of being careless, people do who make
mistakes in general have no intention of making mistakes, the opposite in
fact.
The only possible explanation for the sentence is revenge which achieves
nothing. What this sort of action does do is discourage people from
reporting honest mistakes. There are other factors that also disincetivise,
peer ridicule being one of the major ones.

The action by the court in BC has done absolutely nothing to prevent a
similar action in the future. If in this case, the error had been
discovered prior to the point at which the result was fatal, during the
takeoff run for instance, the chances are this would never have seen a
court at all.

The 5 months was solely the result of the outcome and served no useful
purpose at all. Punishment is appropriate perhaps for deliberate acts but
never ever for errors, however tragic.

During the two world wars many soldiers were shot for desertion, punished
for running away. We now know that many of these unfortunates were sick and
had no control over what they did, seems we never learn, sometimes I wonder
if we want to.
For me the real criminals in this case are the judge and prosecutors.