The ReeveLaw Blog

“People always ask criminal lawyers if they can defend someone who they think is guilty. That is the easy job. Any lawyer will tell you that it is the innocent who are the toughest to defend.” Marie Henein “Tough Crimes”

We live in a court culture where the tail wags the dog. The Judge controls the courtroom, not the police. Thank goodness for Judges like Justice Schreck who recognize and correct this. Now let’s see if the police respect judicial authority or not. ” The practice in this jurisdiction of keeping all in-custody accused in handcuffs unless and until an order is made to remove them is, in my view, contrary to law and should be discontinued.”

CanLII – 2015 ONCJ 116 (CanLII).

“I think one of the great gifts that the study of law provides is that one is trained to suspend judgment. We start with a wicked cynicism but learn to put off taking a decided view. Things are never what they seem at first.” Marie Henein “Tough Crimes” This is the very trait that often sets us apart and which people have difficulty in understanding about lawyers.

“Guess who’s left with the responsibility of issuing an exceptional release. The courts? Special psychiatric or medical advisors? Law enforcement experts? Parole gurus? The federal cabinet, that’s who. Steve and the same bunch of people who now decide whether pipelines get built — and just about everything else.”

 “Trials are complex exercises often involving unforeseen developments. The essence of a trial is the re-creation of past human events through the mechanism of human memory delivered by sworn witnesses. Human memory is notoriously fallible and it is, in part, because of this that we utilize the test of cross-examination to ferret-out the truth. With all trials, the lawyer’s challenge is an exercise “in controlling the contingencies of litigation,” to quote the words of the venerated scholar, Professor John Wigmore. In other words, no matter how in-depth our preparation was, we knew that unanticipated matters would arise as the trial progressed.” Richard Peck “Tough Crimes”

This just kills me every time I see it. A perfect model for the conduct a fair, impartial identification line-up. Okay, can you guess which guy the police think is guilty?? (Ivan Henry, Vancouver, 1982)

“Criminal docket court in Miramichi is likely a mirror image of many others across this country. The courtroom is always filled with people accused of everything from shoplifting to very serious assaults and sometimes homicide. A battery of lawyers is always present with their clients and the scene is generally one of disorganized confusion to the uninitiated, but completely comprehensible to those who ply their trade in the trenches in this and other Provincial Courts across Canada.” Fred Ferguson “Tough Crimes”

That doesn’t mean you can assault him but if you do, the court will lend some understanding of the circumstances.

Sentence takes into account finding ex in bed with another guy.

“Tough Crimes demonstrates that Crown prosecutors and criminal defence lawyers do not escape unscathed from serious trials. The disturbing memories remain.” Honourable John C. Major, C.C., Q.C. Retired Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. For anyone truly interested in justice and our criminal justice system, I highly recommend reading “Touch Crimes: True Cases by Top Canadian Criminal Lawyers” to find out what it’s really like.

“Historically the official stakeholders in the criminal justice system, politicians, judiciary, bench, bar and law enforcement agencies, have taken great pride in the near-certain infallibility of the adversarial system of criminal justice. Today the rising tide of post-conviction DNA exonerations has shed a harsh and unflattering light on the staples of classic investigative tools and trial evidence: investigative and prosecutorial tunnel vision, eye-witness fallibility, hair and fibre junk science, opportunistic jailhouse informants, self-induced and other induced false confessions and disclosure failures. These classic tools, alone and in combination, have been the cause of numerous wrongful convictions.” Richard Wolson “Tough Crimes”