Pubdate: Tue, 21 Nov 2006
Source: Montreal Gazette (CN QU)
Copyright: 2006 The Gazette, a division of Southam Inc.
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/274

NO PLACE FOR VIGILANTISM IN CANADIAN JUSTICE

Carter Foster, Matthew Lambert, Michael Small and Lloyd Bainbridge, 
four men from the tiny island of Grand Manan in New Brunswick, got a 
salutary lesson from a jury last week in the difference between 
thuggery and good citizenship.

It's sad that the lesson was needed in the first place, of course, 
and sadder still that many of the men's fellow islanders appear to 
have learned nothing from their neighbours' fate, but the rest of us 
can be reassured the 12 ordinary men and women on the jury in St. 
Andrew, N.B., were not so easily hoodwinked.

This sordid affair began one night last July when between 20 and 40 
Grand Manan residents gathered at Carter Foster's home, right across 
the street from the house belonging to one Ronald Ross, a newcomer 
widely suspected of being a drug dealer who sold crack cocaine out of 
his living room. Rumours were rife that Ross and his buddies planned 
to burn down several island homes.

At some point, the Grand Mananers and Ross's friends clashed in the 
dark; both sides fired shots, someone beat Ross up and someone else 
burned down his house. Now Ross, who has admitted to using crack 
himself and has a long criminal record for assault and theft, might 
very well have been the neighbour from hell. And the islanders might 
well have been frustrated in their efforts to get the Royal Canadian 
Mounted Police to take their complaints about Ross seriously. People 
in remote communities often sense they're ignored by the forces of 
law and order and feel compelled to take matters into their own hands.

But even if the Mounties should have done more to reassure the 
islanders, nothing excuses what those men did. The law in Canada 
quite rightly takes a dim view of people who go out at night armed 
with rifles, beat up a neighbour and burn down his house. It's sad 
that the line between order and chaos became so blurred on Grand 
Manan that Foster, Lambert et al. appeared to have thought they could 
get away with doing just that. In fact, judging from the way they 
talked before and at their trial, they seemed to think that their 
squalid actions were meritorious.

Fortunately, the jury saw through their absurd claims that they were 
acting to defend themselves and their community and convicted them of 
an array of charges ranging from the inappropriate storing of a 
firearm to arson. With their verdicts, the jury upheld such sacred 
precepts of Canadian criminal law as the presumption of innocence and 
due process.

The convicted men's friends and neighbours have worried publicly that 
the verdict will send a message to drug-dealers that it's open house 
on Grand Manan. We seriously doubt that; enterprising narcotics 
merchants can surely find more lucrative places to do business than a 
thinly populated island in the Bay of Fundy. Even Ross has abandoned 
the place for the greener pastures of Nova Scotia. But even if it 
were true, the verdict sent a far more important message to Canadians 
everywhere: Vigilantism and mob violence are not tolerated anywhere 
in Canada. Period. And that's a good thing.
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