JUSTICE ON TARGET CONTINUES TO FAIL

As the federal government gets tough on crime Ontario’s Attorney General finds it tough to get tough on crime. When it didn’t reach its Justice on Target goals by 2012 it reduced its goals. Nice. Even so more people are entering guilty pleas too early because duty counsel is funnelling them that way, Overburdened duty …

CRIMINALIZING BARBARIC ACTS

The government has introduced legislation to criminalize honour killings, polygamy and forced marriages. To my knowledge we already have laws that prohibit murder, polygamy and establish a minimum age for marriage but the act goes further to render temporary and permanent residents inadmissible for practising polygamy without need for a criminal conviction. As we historically …

DO NOT EVER SUBMIT TO A LIE DETECTOR TEST

First off, a polygraph test is not a lie detector test. No machine can tell if you’re lying or telling the truth. Period. This is junk science, it’s validity has long been debunked, it is notoriously unreliable and results are NOT ever admissible in court. Police use it to trick people into confessing. Here is …

SELFIE INCRIMINATION

It’s a head smacker. Guy steals a cell phone. Guy takes selfies. Guy doesn’t realize phone was synced to the owner’s Google account, thus uploading any and all pics to the cloud. Owner sees photos of guy she doesn’t know. Guy gets arrested. Selfie lands a Georgia man in jail | FOX10 News | Fox10tv.com.

PLEA BARGAINING – WHY INNOCENT PEOPLE PLEAD GUILTY

Here is a thorough detailed explanation and we in Canada are rushing headlong into the same “almost exclusively system of plea bargaining, negotiated behind closed doors and with no judicial oversight. The outcome is very largely determined by the prosecutor alone.” This is fuelled by mandatory minimum sentences and consecutive minimums such as have been …

WHEN IS A BARRELLED OBJECT A FIREARM AND WHEN IS IT A WEAPON?

 The SCC has recently affirmed that the CAO got it right. A firearm “means any barrelled weapon from which any shot, bullet or other missle can be discharged and that is capable of causing serious bodily injury or death”. A weapon “means any thing used, designed to be used or intended to use a) in …