Robson Crim Legal Blog

On November 15, 2019 in the case R. v K.J.M., the Supreme Court of Canada laid out the applicability of R. v Jordan, a case determining ceilings for the reasonable length of time before a trial, to cases involving youth. The Supreme Court determined in this case that the ceilings identified in Jordan did apply to youth cases and that a lowering of the maximum range of eighteen to thirty months for cases concerning youth was unnecessary.

Where the Crown has employed the use of a civilian agent to procure evidence from a criminal enterprise that agent’s credibility becomes integral to the credibility of any evidence they procure. This is especially true when the agent has some aspect of their person, such as a criminal history, which might indicate some level of untrustworthiness. In this case the civilian agent is the sole source of the evidence produced against the appellant, and the agent’s trustworthiness.

Although unrelated to the original intention in investigating the case, R v Dowd brings up some interesting concepts in relation to the jurisprudence surrounding evidence in trials. One of these includes the concept of trial by ambush. For some context, the case of R v Dowd involves a former police officer accused of sexual assault (indecent touching) on a nine-year old girl.

“The Devil in the Details – why Trudeau’s ban on assault weapons might not be effective to reduce gun crime after Canada’s largest mass shooting in Nova Scotia” Social worker Tim Landon isn’t your typical gun owner. A self-described social justice advocate he witnessed a violent gun crime as a young adult. He’s now an unlikely opponent of the Canadian government’s recent ban on 1,500 military style “assault weapons”.

The Law of War refers to the component of international law that regulates the conditions for war (jus ad bellum) and the conduct of warring parties (jus in bello). Over the past two decades, the conduct of warfare has changed drastically, and has become more asymmetric in nature.