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PT6A posted:No way they're more plentiful in Canada, even Alberta, than in the US. First of all, half of that moron's arguments (the one who the judge is talking about, not the judge himself, who is witty and hilarious) seem based on a bizarre conception of US jurisprudence anyway, and second of all, that's only the second sovereign citizen I've ever heard of (another one claimed his rental apartment was an embassy or his personal sovereign nation or some rubbish, in order to avoid eviction). In terms of referencing decisions from other jurisdictions, there's two things going on in Canadian jurisprudence. First, judges like to reason from authority and on the basis of precedent; nobody wants to be the first person to deal with something. There are two types of precedent: binding precedent as from a higher court to a lower court and persuasive precedent as from one court not in the same hierarchy (or lower in that hierarchy) to another. Even if a judge isn't bound by any decisions regarding a particular issue they can and will look to see if anyone else has dealt with the same problem and see what their solution was. Judges tend to prefer decisions made by judges in the most similar circumstances they can find, so they will prefer Canadian decisions over foreign decisions. But, if something has not been dealt with in Canada they will of course have to look outside to other jurisdictions with relatively similar laws and circumstances. This is not all that unusual in Canada though it is by no means the norm and would be really strange in any run-of-the-mill situation. You'll mostly see references to other common law decisions at the Supreme Court level when judges are dealing with things that haven't really been previously addressed in Canadian law. As a completely off-the-cuff estimate I'd say the most commonly referenced non-Canadian jurisdictions are the UK, then the US and then Australia. It probably happens more in smaller jurisdictions, like Canada, than in the United States just because there's far more of a chance that some American court will have dealt with any given situation, legal and/or factual previously. The US is massive relatively speaking and has a load of different jurisdictions (50 states, multiple federal circuits, etc.). Canada only has one criminal law covering the entire country and in general only has two layers of appeal for serious criminal cases so there's a lot less law happening. The other thing that happens is since Canada was formerly part of the British Empire we have lots of old Imperial law still kicking around. The highest court of appeal in Canada was the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council until 1949 so their decisions and case law still form the bedrock of a lot of contemporary law. Moreover, judges adopted a lot of Imperial law even if it wasn't strictly speaking binding because they felt it was the most similar and appropriate. As an example of this from criminal law, the law dealing with the admissibility of confessions by the accused to police in Canada originates in a 1914 case called Ibrahim v. the King which dealt with the murder trial in Hong Kong of an Afghan soldier in the British Army. About the DUI stuff, I'd just note that having your license suspended is an administrative matter, not a criminal matter, and would be done by the relevant provincial authorities. That is to say, it's very likely, though I don't actually know how Alberta works, done by a completely separate group of people from the police and the Crown who would not at all be communicating with each other. The province can suspend a driver's license, in general, for any number of reasons. In regulated activities like driving the government has a lot broader powers to tell people what to do than in non-regulated contexts. You do not have a right to drive a car; that's why you need a license. If the government thinks you might be a danger on the roads I think it's sensible to suspend your license and to wait and see the outcome of the trial. I don't at all see how that stacks the deck against a criminal defendant in a separate preceding for impaired driving.
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Jun 22, 2015 21:15
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nm posted:You'd get to refer to yourself as the crown. That's pretty badass. My only client is an old lady who lives in England and never talks to me. So that's an upside.
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Jul 7, 2015 11:34
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ActusRhesus posted:We have designated victim advocates whose job it is to make sure the victims know what's going on/understand the process while still keeping arm's length from the prosecutors. Do you guys not have that? We have a Victim Services Division set up to do that. That's run by social workers, not lawyers. They do a lot of stuff like offering counselling or directing people to other social services. But, they will explain the process and keep the victim informed if the victim indicates that they want that. That said, there are limits on what victim services can do. Often victims/complainants aren't interested in speaking with victim services. They'll either explicitly say so or they'll not reply to any attempts to contact them. Or, for whatever other reasons lines of communication never get opened. Obviously a lot of victims of crime are themselves impoverished and live in precarious situations where they can be hard to locate or they move around a lot. Good Crowns or police officers should also be keeping victims informed of the status of the case and should be making an effort to explain what's going on. It's good general practice and it makes life easier down the road. BigHead posted:If we found out a prosecutor withheld evidence he or she would not be a prosecutor any longer. This is roughly the same in my office. I don't get paid more for convictions. To my knowledge, I don't think anyone tracks anything like a conviction rate; it's never been raised with me if they do. And, I assume I would be fired if I withheld evidence. I'd hope so. I've never seen it in my office, but I can't imagine anyone wanting to risk their job or, really, their career and good name just to get a conviction in one case. There's a lot more files where that one came from. Up here in the great white north, as stated, we're bound by Stinchcombe which says that all relevant (for a very broad definition of relevant) evidence in possession of the Crown must be disclosed to defence. The only thing I will hold back in certain cases is the victim's contact info or address if that wouldn't otherwise be known to the accused. And that's just a safety precaution. I'll give it out to the defence lawyer if asked, but it doesn't always need to go to the accused.
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Jul 21, 2015 23:25
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Drewjitsu posted:Right, what I mean to say is that the current system of state level criminal law is hilarious and inconsistent across the country which leads to confusion and uncertainties. Unlike a jurisdiction like Canada, where criminal law is a federal law power through and through. We've still got plenty of inconsistency and confusion. I don't think we should be chauvinists about our division of powers--it's not always the most workable or logical system in the world.
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Jul 22, 2015 11:24
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