Criminal Law/Policy
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Misfiring
Almost exactly two years ago, I blogged about a challenge by an Ontario couple whose immense firearms collection was confiscated after they failed to convince the courts that the Criminal Code‘s firearms provisions were unconstitutional. This time, they argue that the Code‘s provision requiring the forfeiture of the guns and ammunition involved in the firearms… Continue reading
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Truth and Sentencing
In a pair of decisions delivered this morning, R. v. Summers, 2014 SCC 26, and a companion case, R. v. Carvery, 2014 SCC 27, the Supreme Court has endorsed the trial courts’ practice of routinely crediting time spent by accused persons before their sentencing on a more than one-to-one basis against the total duration of their sentence, the Truth in Sentencing Act,… Continue reading
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Petty Punishment, SCC Edition
Rather lost in all the noise generated by the Supreme Court’s decision in l’Affaire Nadon is the Court’s decision, delivered last Thursday, in Canada (Attorney General) v. Whaling, 2014 SCC 20, which considered, and found unconstitutional, the retroactive application of the abolition of accelerated parole review by one of the recent “tough on crime” laws. I would like to… Continue reading
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The Bill Is Due
In yesterday’s post on R. v. Cloud, 2014 QCCQ 464, I bemoaned the lack of property protections in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, arguing that, as Cloud demonstrated, it hurt the poor rather than the well-off. However, while property rights are not mentioned in the Charter, section 1 of the Canadian Bill of Rights… Continue reading
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Greed Is Not Good
Many bad things have been said about the “victim surcharge” which the Criminal Code requires people found guilty of an offence to pay, and which recent amendments have made mandatory, depriving judges of any discretion to waive it, regardless of whether it represented a disproportionate punishment for a minor offence or would cause great hardship… Continue reading
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Expanding Hatred
Yesterday, the federal government unveiled yet another omnibus criminal law bill, Bill C-13, which would become, if enacted, become the Protecting Canadians against Online Crime Act. Although it presented as a law to fight cyber-bullying, it would do a great many other things besides. In particular, it would give law enforcement much greater powers of… Continue reading
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Its Own Place
“The mind is its own place,” says Milton’s Satan. And since computers have, for all practical purposes, replaced our brains, so are those, right? The Supreme Court of Canada, at any rate, agrees. In a case decided last week, R. v. Vu, 2013 SCC 60, it held that police cannot search a computer on the basis… Continue reading
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Facing Justice ― English Version
I wrote last year about the Supreme Court’s decision on whether a witness in a criminal proceeding could testify while wearing a niqab, a full-face veil, R. v. N.S., 2012 SCC 72, [2012] 3 SCR 726. Of course, the questions about balancing trial fairness and freedom of religion which the Court had to confront in that case do not only… Continue reading
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Looking Back
Rule of Law theorists invariaby insist that legislation must be prospective ― that the law must be changed, if changed it must be, for the future only and not for the past. But a thoughtful opinion delivered last week by Justice MacDonnell of the Superior Court of Ontario shows that sometimes at least, things are… Continue reading
Double Aspect 