BC Civil Liberties Association Calls The Province's Green Paper on Justice Reform "Critically Flawed"

The BC Criminal Courts Are In A Time Of ChangeIn February of this year, the BC Government published a Green Paper on justice reform titled "Modernizing British Columbia's Justice System". The central theme of the Green Paper was that the criminal case load for the courts was decreasing, but the system is costing more in real terms each year.

The BC Civil Liberties Association has since released it's own paper, called "Justice Denied: The Causes of BC's Criminal Justice System Crisis". The BCCLA's paper attacks the Green Paper's central theme, relying on data to argue that the BC criminal justice system has been doing more with less for many years, and that "the vast majority of the challenges faced by the system today are the direct result of policy decisions and funding shortfalls made over the last decade."

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BC Justice Reform Survey

Have you taken five minutes to complete the BC Justice Reform Survey?

The results may help inform the decisions of those in the process of drafting proposals for improving the BC Justice System.

British Columbia's Top Judges Speak Out On Court Delays

Ian Hanomansing, a journalist with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, conducted an interview with Lance Finch, Robert Baumann and Thomas Crabtree, the Chief Judges of the BC Court of Appeal, the BC Supreme Court and the BC Provincial Court respectively. Their comments are wide-ranging: the under-funding of the BC justice system, public perception of sentencing, judicial independence, and cameras and the public in the court room.

(I first saw this clip on Erik Magraken's excellent personal injury blog, BC Injury Law.)

New Trial Ordered After Judge Met Counsel In Chambers, In Absence Of Accused

A Meeting In The Judge's Chambers Led To A New TrialA man convicted of four counts of indecent assault, arising from incidents in Oshawa in the early 1970s, has appealed successfully in the Ontario Court of Appeal. The principal ground of appeal was the exclusion of the accused from a meeting between trial counsel and the judge in the judge's chambers in the middle of the trial. The case is called HMTQ v. Schofield 2012 ONCA 120.

Facts

The Crown led evidence from four complainants, as well as some other witnesses. After the Crown closed its case, the accused took the stand. During the lunch break following the accused's testimony, the trial judge called both Paul Murray for the Crown and Alan Risen, defence counsel, into his chambers.

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Right Answer, For The Wrong Reasons

British Columbia Provincial Court Faces Pressure To Resolve Backlog In Court ListsAs more cases are stayed because of court backlogs, the Victoria Times Colonist recently published an editorial that was highly critical of the BC justice system, and called for fundamental change. While I agree that change is necessary, the argument advanced by the editors betrays a superficial understanding of the complexity of the problems faced by our justice system, which will lead inevitably to the wrong sorts of changes.

The Times Colonist said:

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IRP Order: Declaration Of Invalidity Postponed For Six Months

No Christmas For Drivers Affected By BC's Unconstitutional Immediate Roadside ProhibitionMr. Justice Sigurdson has released a ruling regarding the terms of the Order to follow from his earlier ruling on the unconstitutionality of the Immediate Roadside Prohibition, or IRP. In a nutshell, he will order that the declaration of invalidity is suspended until June 30, 2012; the declaration of invalidity will not affect the parts of the IRP regime that apply to drivers who failed or refused to comply with the demand that they blow in the screening device, and that the issues relating to the remedies to be granted to drivers who sought the deletion from their driving records of any reference to the IRP, and reimbursement for penalties and costs like the ignition interlock and the Responsible Driver Program, will be adjourned pending further argument.

You can read a copy of today's ruling here, and all of our earlier posts about the IRP here.

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Update On The Immediate Roadside Prohibition Confusion

BC Drivers Wait For The Judge's Order In IRP CaseOn November 30, Mr. Justice Sigurdson ruled that BC's Immediate Roadside Prohibition (IRP) law was unconstitutional, because the review mechanism failed to comply with the Charter of Rights. Since then, thousands of affected drivers across BC have wondered what happens next. Many of the drivers have completed part of the penalties imposed on them by a law they now know is unconstitutional; others have just begun to go through the process. They want to know what to do now.

I spoke this morning with Phil Riddell who was one of the lawyers acting for the driver in the IRP case. We do not agree on everything, but we do agree it is too early to say how this is going to turn out.

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Criminal Lawyers In Kamloops Argue Over Right Of Victim To Attend Court

Kamloops Witness Denied When He Applied For A Sprng Order To Attend The Trial Of Man Accused Of Assaulting HimSeveral Kamloops criminal lawyers argued an unusual application in Kamloops Provincial Court recently. Mr. Caron was the victim in Mr. Michell's assault case. His testimony was completed and he had been excused, and the case was adjourned to continue on a later date. On the date scheduled for the continuation, Mr. Caron was incarcerated at the Kamloops Regional Correctional Centre. He applied to the Court for a "spring order" compelling the Sheriffs at KRCC to transport him to the Court House so that he could attend the continuation of the trial. The trial judge held that she had no jurisdiction to make such an Order, saying:

[8]        The ability of the public to attend at trial is permissive not prescriptive.  In other words, the court cannot compel a person who is a member of the public to attend, but the public is largely entitled to come.

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Application of the IRP Ruling to Drivers Already Serving Penalties

Thousands of Drivers Wait for IRP Order, Following Ruling That the BC Law Was UnconstitutionalBC police issued Immediate Roadside Prohibitions to 23,366 drivers between September 2010 and September 2011, a rate of almost 2,000 IRPs per month. Of that amount, 7,965 were given to drivers who had provided a roadside breath sample in the "warn" range, between .05 and .08 mgs of alcohol in 100 mls of blood. The situation of those drivers would not have been changed by the recently released ruling in Sivia v. British Columbia (Superintendent of Motor Vehicles), 2011 BCSC 1639, because the parts of the law that applied to them were declared to comply with constitutional requirements.

(I wrote a post about the Sivia ruling last week.)

The drivers who may be affected by the declaration that the IRP is unconstitutional are the drivers who provided breath samples that registered above the legal limit of .08 or who refused to blow, and consequently received 90 day IRP prohibitions and 30 day impoundments. There number of drivers in that category between September 2010 and September 2011 was 15, 401.

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Exclusion of Evidence: Assessing Society’s Interest in an Adjudication on the Merits

The Repute of the Administration of Justice is Protected by Excluding EvidenceThe third line of inquiry asks whether the damage to the truth seeking function of the criminal trial would be outweighed by the vindication of the specific Charter right or rights through the exclusion of evidence. The two main factors are:

1. The reliability of the evidence.
2. The importance of the evidence to the prosecution case.

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