Robson Crim Legal Blog

Who let the dogs out? This familiar phrase, popularized in song, figuratively characterizes similarities between men and dogs. This is one of the many prevailing efforts by society overall to humanize and correspondingly place our trust in dogs. They are after all “man’s best friend”, exhibiting, imagined or not, all of the best human characteristics. Is it a surprise that they’ve been elevated to the position of police “sidekick”?

The case of R v Chung (“Chung”) exemplifies how judges can sometimes err in law and misapply legal principles. In Chung, the trial judge should have followed the reasonable person test set out in R v Roy (“Roy”) to determine whether or not Mr. Chung had the necessary mens rea for a finding of dangerous driving causing death. Instead, the trial judge focused on the speed and duration of Chung’s conduct, which led him to wrongly conclude that the mens rea component was not esta

When police officers investigate crimes, they rely on a variety of means to find evidence. In crimes that are more planned and calculated, officers may need to conduct specific types of undercover investigations. This is especially relevant for cases for involving drug smuggling, human trafficking and/or terrorism. And in conducting these undercover investigations, some officers are tasked with tempting individuals to commit crimes.

R v Sullivan (“Sullivan”) was the first Canadian appellate case to address the constitutionality of section 33.1 of the Criminal Code (“the Code”), which prevents defendants from using the non-mental disorder automatism defence when caused by self-induced intoxication.

As the conversation around childhood sexual abuse grows, so does the knowledge that the impact this type of abuse has on the victim is lifelong. A misunderstood aspect of this lifelong impact is the time it may take a child to come forward and disclose the sexual abuse to someone they can trust.