POLICING FOR PROFIT

Not only are drug dogs frequently wrong, if you’re driving to Florida this winter be careful of policing for profit – highway robbery on the Interstate. In some states the police keep what they seize, so they will stop you and use any technique they can to search you and your car and they will seize any money you have on you claiming it must be drug/crime related.

Expert: Drug Dogs ‘Frequently Wrong’ – NewsChannel5.com.

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 discouraged Chinese immigration by making possession of opium illegal, is this perhaps our modern day attempt to discourage Muslim immigration? Is this a good thing?

Criminalizing ‘barbaric’ acts law welcomed.

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 a polygraph expert who is being indicted for teaching people (for profit) how to “pass” a test.  Proof enough.

Polygraph.com owner indicted for training customers to beat the polygraph | Ars Technica.

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 recently introduced here. Don’t be a fool and think you can you can successfully negotiate this yourself or with a free lawyer. You can’t.

Why Innocent People Plead Guilty by Jed S. Rakoff | The New York Review of Books.

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 causing death or injury to any person or b) for the purpose of threatening or intimidating any person and includes a firearm”. Barrelled objects fall into 3 groups: 1) Those that shoot a projectile with a velocity of less than 214 ft./s. are not firearms because they are not capable of serious injury or death; these objects will only be considered weapons if they meet paras a) or b). 2) Those that shoot a projectile with a velocity of more than 214 ft./s. are firearms because they are capable of causing serious injury or death. 3) Those that shoot a projectile with a velocity of more than 500 f./s. These objects fall within the definition of firearm for all purposes of the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act and must be licensed accordingly. See the judgment for full details to this summary

CanLII – 2013 ONCA 539 (CanLII).

ANATOMY OF A SEXUAL ASSAULT CHARGE

This is a pretty good article written by a non-criminal defence lawyer.  It is, of course, written with a particular bias but if you’ve been charged with sexual assault it will give you some good insights into what you’re facing

via Reasonable Doubt: Jian Ghomeshi news focuses attention on how court deals with sexual assault | Georgia Straight, Vancouver’s News & Entertainment Weekly.