“The Crown’s decision to prosecute was so questionable that a judge took the rare step of suggesting it was not in the public interest to proceed to trial. But the Crown went ahead anyway, forcing a grieving Hewson, her partner, and the court system into a process that dragged over three years only to end in January with most of the charges gone and Hewson with no criminal record, and no jail time.
Hewson’s lawyers are left asking: What was the point?
The case was an example of “the criminalization of poverty,” said one of Hewson’s lawyers, Megan Savard. “If a wealthy white woman had left a dishwasher pod on the floor and her child had consumed it and died, and had she responded exactly as urgently and responsibly as our client responded, I think it is fair to say she would never have been charged.”
The Crown has complete discretion over which charges laid by police should proceed in court — if any — and is required by policy to only go ahead “if there is a reasonable prospect of conviction and it is in the public interest.”
But in a rare move, Bliss (who conducted the preliminary inquiry) concluded his ruling by questioning the necessity of putting the parents on trial.
“I wish to stress, however, that the fact that there is some evidence that requires the defendants to be committed for trial does not mean that the defendants would, or even should, be convicted, nor should their committal for trial be taken, in the circumstances of this case, to be an endorsement of the view that it is in the public interest to prosecute them for the death of their son,” the judge wrote.”
