Racial Profiling by Police
From the streets of Minneapolis to the streets of Winnipeg, the unlawful use of force by police can end in death, injury, and devastation. George Floyd, who was black, marked one more chapter in a long history of police brutality and racial profiling.
“Requisite State of Mind” in Second-Degree Murder
In the Manitoba case of R v Belyk (“Belyk”), the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench (“the MBQB”) had the task of analyzing whether Jordan Belyk was ‘intoxicated enough’ to negate the mens rea necessary for the crime of second-degree murder. The MBCA illustrated several important facts that are necessary to claim this level of intoxication in this decision. Ultimately, the MBCA decided that Belyk could not form the requisite mens rea and could not be charged with second-degree mu
Right to Counsel
On July 1, 2018, an officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police [“the RCMP”] approached a car, which he stated was parked in the middle of the road. Inside the car, Glenn Cure was sleeping in the driver’s seat. After knocking on the window, waking him up, the officer testified that he saw the appellant move his hand toward the gearshift, prompting the officer to open the door of the car and remove the keys from the ignition.
The Complex Balance of Sentencing Children
R v F (JM) [“JMF”] was recently decided by the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench (“the MBQB”). The offender in this case, JMF, has already been found guilty of first-degree murder for the killing of twenty-six-year-old Tyler Kirton on January 3, 2017. At the time of the murder, JMF was three months shy of his seventeenth birthday. The trial in JMF was held to determine if JMF should be sentenced as an adult or as a youth.
Mistakes in the Evolving Rules of Delay
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (“the Charter”) establishes in section 11(b) that any person who is charged with an offence must be tried for that offence in a reasonable amount of time.1 Not long after the Charter went into effect, the Supreme Court of Canada (“the Court”) clarified in R v Rahey (“Rahey”) that in order to violate section 11(b), a delay would have to be shockingly long, to an unconscionable degree.
