Another Weekend Out-on-the-Town Timmothy Field, an ordinary 18 year-old Calgary teen, was out partying with friends on a Friday night. They went to two clubs, and then went back to his residence where they were drinking and playing video games until 4am. He and his friends left early that Saturday morning at 8:30am with little [...]

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a two-part series on the recent judgments the ONCA handed down addressing the post-9/11 terrorism laws. Just before recessing for the holidays, the Ontario Court of Appeal gave supporters of a “tough-on-crime” policy an early Christmas present.  In a string of six decisions released on December 17, 2010, [...]

On March 1, the Manitoba Court of Appeal released its decision in R. v. Moquin, 2010 MBCA 22. In doing so, the Court of Appeal visited how to properly distinguish between the crime of “assault” (s. 265 of the Criminal Code) and the crime of “assault causing bodily harm” (under s. 267(b) of the Criminal [...]

Friday’s equivocal Supreme Court decision in R. v. Nasogaluak (2010 SCC 6) can be viewed both as upholding mandatory minimum sentences and as “a noteworthy chink in the previously impenetrable wall” of mandatory minimums. The Court held that, despite conclusive evidence of a Charter violation emanating from police violence, the sentencing judge had no discretion [...]

In accepting the Criminal Lawyers’ Association’s 2009 G. Arthur Martin Medal, Justice Marc Rosenberg observed Parliament’s increasingly punitive approach to sentencing demonstrated by, in part, “the narrowing, almost to the vanishing point, [of] the circumstances in which a conditional sentence can be imposed”. Bill C-9 came into force in December 2007 and effected this “narrowing” [...]

Recently issuing judgment in R. v. Craig, 2009 SCC 23 and companion cases R. v. Ouellette, 2009 SCC 24 and R. v. Nguyen, 2009 SCC 25, the Supreme Court of Canada has circumscribed the applicability of the forfeiture provisions for real property related to a designated substance offence under sections 16(1) and 19.1(3) of the [...]