As has been widely reported, the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday agreed to hear Conrad Black and his co-defendants Jack Boultbee and Mark Kipnis’s appeals of their convictions in a Chicago court. The Petition for Certiorari, what we would call an Application for Leave to Appeal, can be viewed at Scotus Blog and is worth looking …
The Globe & Mail is reporting today on a case of alleged corruption involving participants in the Ontario justice system. The case started out as an investigation into fraud at Bombardier Inc. and has since expanded to include a member of the Ontario Provincial Police and a Toronto Crown Prosecutor. Included among the charges against …
The conduct of a trial is not for the faint of heart. It is stressful, time consuming work. In its March 2009 cover story entitled “7 over 70, Lions of the Trial Bar”, the American Bar Association Journal profiled seven of the most distinguished trial lawyers in the United States, all of them over 70 …
It is not uncommon for an accused person convicted of a criminal offence to blame their lawyer for the outcome. While courts look upon such complaints with scepticism, the reality is that mistakes can happen and inadequate representation can cause a miscarriage of justice. The Court of Appeal for Ontario has recognized the importance of …
It is a fundamental aspect of our civil justice system that parties to a lawsuit are required to make available to their opponent any relevant document relating to the matters in issue in the action. It does not matter if the document helps or hurts the cause, it must be produced. Lawyers, and particularly insurance …
In the Canadian legal system, there are generally two elements required to prove a crime: the act (actus rea) and the mental state (mens rea). Generally, without proof of these two elements there can be no criminal conviction. However, what may at first seem like a simple equation of two parts, can actually become a …
The Role of Mens Rea and Actus Rea in Criminal Law Read More »
The old adage “innocent until proven guilty” could soon become a phrase of the past. In August, a Montreal Court was scheduled to handle the first criminal case involving the new reverse onus law. The Reverse Onus law is a recent amendment to the Canadian Criminal Code that went into effect May 2008. The law …
New Reverse Onus Law Could Change the Face of the Canadian Criminal Law Read More »
