Justice is the key to peace and the process must APPEAR to be just. Officer Wilson may well be not guilty but the problem is that this was not the question. The question was whether there should be a trial. The grand jury’s function, like our preliminary inquiry, is to receive evidence and assuming it to be true, decide whether it is sufficient that an impartial, properly instructed jury COULD (possibly) find guilt. If so, then there is a proper trial conducted by a judge which is open and transparent to the public. This grand jury assessed evidence, determined credibility of witnesses and made findings of fact in a proceeding considering inadmissible evidence, without cross-examination, without a judge or proper legal instruction, directed by a prosecutor behind closed doors in secret. The jury did not decide if there should be a trial, they effectively were the trial and rendered a VERDICT of not guilty. That leaves open the very reasonable suspicion that a police friendly prosecutor manipulated the process in favour of the police. Confidence in justice cannot be achieved by a flawed process conducted in secret.
NO CONTEST PLEAS
“If a client says, ‘I am not guilty but I just want to get it over with,’” can you enter a plea of “no contest”? Technically it’s available but practically it is not. If you don’t plead guilty or not guilty the criminal code directs a Judge to enter a plea of “not guilty” on your behalf. You cannot admit the allegations as being true because that’s admitting guilt which is the same as a guilty plea. If not admitted, the Crown still has to prove guilt by presenting evidence, which is a trial. You either admit the allegations or you don’t. There is no middle ground.
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 counsel often do a quick assessment of the case and ask the accused if they’d like to plead guilty. In every respect you get what you pay for. Still, if you want a trial you’ll have to wait 240 days for it.
A NEW LOW FOR LEGAL AID
Now they want to hire poor articling students and not pay them. Despicable.
PEEL COPS – DISHONEST
What happens when the police themselves have no respect for and abuse truth, citizens, Judges and the judicial process? Apparently nothing. It’s outrageous.
Judges have had issues with Peel Police before | News | Toronto Sun.
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.
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?
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.
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 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.