The Ontario Court of Appeal has upheld medical marijuana provisions that require those with serious illnesses to obtain a physician's approval before they can legally acquire cannabis to alleviate their pain. The 3-0 decision overturned a lower court decision that had earlier struck down the laws as being impractical and difficult to comply with. The appellate judges ruled that the case under appeal had failed to establish that patients at the heart of the case were systematically unable to obtain medical marijuana. [continues 418 words]
The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that drug evidence obtained in an illegal police search can nonetheless be used by the Crown to prosecute a Nova Scotia motorist. In a 5-2 decision, the majority said that a Kentville man, Brendan David Aucoin, should not have been searched while an officer was preparing a traffic ticket for him. However, they said that the need to prosecute crime outweighs the unconstitional nature of the search. The search arose after a routine traffic stop in 2008 by a police officer who suspected a licence plate infraction. Detecting alcohol on Mr. Aucoin's breath, the officer administered a roadside screening test and impounded his car. [continues 465 words]
Harsh federal sentencing policies are propelling the country back to a time of massive prison overcrowding and riots, according to a senior Department of Justice adviser who recently retired, David Daubney. With a government omnibus crime bill on the verge of becoming law, Mr. Daubney said he felt compelled to issue a warning that federal priorities threaten to undo decades of correctional research and reform. "Overcrowding is already severe at both the federal and provincial levels," Mr. Daubney said in an interview. "It's going to get tougher, and prisons will be more violent places. We may go back to the era of riots in prisons. I'm afraid it is going to get worse before it gets any better." [continues 586 words]
A confrontation is brewing between the Harper government and Canadian courts as ripples spread from the Supreme Court decision ordering Ottawa to keep its hands off a Vancouver supervised injection site. The Insite ruling forged a new means to strike down laws if there is scientific or statistical evidence showing that a regulation worsened the danger that an individual or group faces. In so doing, it gave judges a new tool for activism and ensured that legal waves would surge across several important Charter of Rights cases already in the courts, and spawn many new challenges. Among the issues likely to be affected, say judges, lawyers and academics, are laws governing assisted suicide, prostitution and mandatory minimum prison sentences. [continues 995 words]
The Supreme Court of Canada on Friday overrode federal objections to a controversial supervised drug injection clinic in Vancouver and ordered that it remain open. The Court said that the Harper government cannot refuse a special exemption allowing the clinic to operate without fear of prosecution for possessing and trafficking in hard drugs. The landmark ruling was a life-saving triumph for the Insite injection site, where drug users self-inject drugs under the supervision of health professionals. It resolves a major source of tension between B.C. and the federal government, and appears to pave the way for other supervised injections clinics to open in cities where drug addiction is a social and medical problem. [continues 645 words]
For hundreds of Vancouver addicts who inject themselves with illicit drugs at a medically supervised site, a Supreme Court of Canada hearing on Thursday may hold the key to life and death. For B.C. and the federal government, the looming legal battle is a vitally important clash over health policy that goes to the very roots of the Canadian Constitution. Both levels of government argue that, under the arcane phraseology of the 1867 Constitution Act, they have the power to decide the legality of the Insite injection clinic - the only supervised injection site of its type in North America. [continues 579 words]
The Supreme Court of Canada has carved a chunk out of the right to personal privacy, concluding that police may seize electricity-use records as part of a criminal investigation. Wednesday's decision exposed a sharp fault line on a court that tends to speak unanimously. One faction sided strongly with law enforcement, arguing that there is no absolute right to privacy. The dissenting judges raised fears that utilities are being turned into spies and could be conscripted into turning over more and more personal information. [continues 434 words]
Toronto, Vancouver - From Friday's Globe and Mail The future of Vancouver's supervised drug-injection site, Insite, will be decided in the Supreme Court of Canada. The court said Thursday that it will decide whether the federal government has the authority to shut down the Downtown Eastside clinic - - the first such clinic in North America to allow addicts to inject themselves with prohibited drugs under a nurse's supervision. The case has turned into an important jurisdictional struggle between the provincial and federal governments. [continues 575 words]
Five Men Lose Bid To End Corruption Case Five former Toronto drug squad officers caught up in a massive allegation of police corruption must face trial, the Supreme Court of Canada said Monday. In a 3-0 ruling, a panel of Supreme Court judges denied the officers leave to appeal an earlier Ontario Court of Appeal decision that had rejected a lower-court finding that their right to a speedy trial had been violated. The officers - John Schertzer, Steven Correia, Joseph Miched, Ned Maodus and Raymond Pollard - are charged with falsifying notes, robbing and beating drug dealers, and conducting illegal searches between 1997 and 2002. [continues 274 words]
Ontario Court of Appeal thrashes sentencing judge for saying harsh penalties for marijuana have little effect on its use and production The Ontario Court of Appeal thrashed a sentencing judge today for saying that sending people to jail in hopes of deterring marijuana offences is a form of insanity. The appeal court said that Ontario Court Judge J. Elliott Allen has no right to misuse his judicial position to issue the sort of political "diatribe" that has no place in a courtroom. [continues 585 words]
Size matters in crime, judges say in ruling minor offender can keep home and upholding two other property seizures A Vancouver woman who applied her green thumb to a $100,000 marijuana grow operation should not have to forfeit her home as punishment, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled yesterday. In its first run at interpreting a federal forfeiture law, the court said that the size of a grow-operation means everything. It said that Judy Ann Craig was a minor offender who needed no greater punishment than a fine and conditional prison sentence. [continues 698 words]
The Supreme Court of Canada handed provinces the key to the mint yesterday, declaring that an Ontario law aimed at forfeiting the proceeds of crime is constitutional. The ruling opens the door to the provinces grabbing millions, if not tens of millions, of dollars per year. Eight provinces have already fashioned forfeiture provisions into a cottage industry, seizing homes, automobiles, bank accounts and numerous other forms of assets. Yesterday's 7-0 ruling also had the effect of sparing the provinces from having to potentially return millions of dollars in previously seized property. [continues 421 words]
Privacy Rights End When Trash Hits The Curb, Top Court Says The Supreme Court of Canada said yesterday that governments have the right to sift through personal garbage once it reaches your property line, concluding a classic contest over property rights. In a 7-0 ruling, the court said the rubbish is fair game for police, tax investigators or any other government scrutineer. The decision means that Russell Patrick, a former record-holding swimmer on the Canadian swim team, will spend four years in prison for drug offences that came to light after police snatched garbage bags from behind his Calgary home on Dec. 17, 2003. [continues 700 words]
OTTAWA -- A titanic struggle within the Supreme Court of Canada over how to redesign rules that govern throwing out tainted evidence reached a new level yesterday as the judges sought help in deciding how much is too much police misconduct. During an appeal involving the seizure of 35 kilos (77 pounds) of cocaine found during a flagrantly illegal search, one judge after another expressed frustration with the difficulty of finding a workable balance between the many conflicting factors that arise in these battles over evidence. [continues 558 words]
Growing Chasm Between Civil Libertarians And Interests Of Law Enforcement Agencies When Ontario Provincial Police Constable Brian Bertoncello spotted a rented SUV being driven sedately along a Northern Ontario highway at precisely the speed limit on Oct. 24, 2004, it immediately set off his internal radar. Switching on his flashing lights, Constable Bertoncello brought the vehicle to a stop. "It's very rare that you get somebody driving directly on the speed limit," he explained later. The officer's suspicions grew as he questioned the nervous-looking occupants of the vehicle, Bradley Harrison and Sean Friesen, who had driven non-stop from Vancouver. [continues 512 words]
Ontario has reaped millions under a controversial forfeiture law that is about to be tested in the Supreme Court When Toronto police officers pulled over Robin Chatterjee's car on March 27, 2003, they detected the reek of fresh marijuana - but couldn't find a trace of it. Aside from $29,020 in cash, an exhaust fan and a light ballast, there was a dearth of even circumstantial evidence to link Mr. Chatterjee to a marijuana grow operation. The Carleton University student was freed without charges. [continues 759 words]
An order forcing a Vancouver woman to forfeit a home in which she operated a small-scale marijuana grow operation is unconscionably harsh, her lawyer says in a brief to the Supreme Court of Canada. The case, which will be heard next Thursday, shows an entirely different side of the forfeiture debate. The defendant, Judy Ann Craig, 58, is throwing herself on the mercy of the court in a bid to keep her home. "Forfeiture of a residence of someone at retirement age, with no record, is severe and destroys hope in rehabilitation," says a brief to the court from Howard Rubin. "It serves no sentencing purpose." [continues 167 words]
Nothing was stirring but the raccoons on Dec. 17, 2003, when Calgary police swooped down in a predawn raid to snatch Russell Patrick's garbage. Reaching over Mr. Russell's property line, officers made off with several bags of refuse, eliciting enough evidence of a potential drug-manufacturing operation to obtain a search warrant on his house. Shortly afterward, Mr. Patrick was charged with producing and trafficking the methamphetamine MDA, launching a classic battle over the constitutional right to privacy. At a Supreme Court of Canada hearing tomorrow, the judges will be asked to overturn Mr. Patrick's conviction and exclude the evidence on the grounds that seizing a citizen's garbage is the mark of a police state. [continues 97 words]
Controversial Case of Calgary Warrant Based on Search of Garbage Behind House One of Several Challenges Before Judges The highlight of the Supreme Court's fall term could well turn out to be garbage. One of the most intriguing cases the court will hear revolves around the extent to which an individual can expect garbage to be private. The case arose in Calgary when police successfully obtained a search warrant based on the contents of garbage from behind Russell Patrick's home - including materials normally associated with home ecstasy labs. [continues 619 words]
Longer Sentences Blamed for Burden Imposing mandatory minimum prison terms on criminal offenders is adding approximately $80-million per year to the price of justice, says an Ontario judge privy to correctional statistics and projections. "We have been told that federal correctional officials estimate they will increase the sentenced population by 1,000 prisoners per year," the judge said in an interview. It costs about $80,000 a year to keep a penitentiary inmate, so the additional burden of those on mandatory minimum sentences multiplies out to $80-million. [continues 976 words]
