Courts face a difficult task in finding facts at trial. Judges must determine who’s evidence they believe. Judges are able to accept some, none or all of a witnesses’ evidence. The question of which evidence to accept can only be answered by a proper analysis of the evidence of all of the witnesses -- considering the internal consistency of each witness' evidence, its consistency with other evidence found to be reliable and its consistency with common sense and ordinary human experience.

It wasn’t that long ago that judges would routinely impose double time for pretrial custody (counting two days for every one day in jail awaiting trial or sentencing). Sometimes judges would even grant three-for-one, or four-for-one credit. The rationale was twofold—first, no consideration is given for early parole eligibility in pretrial custody, and second, conditions of confinement in pretrial facilities are generally more onerous due to a lack of programs and other facilities for inmates.

There are a number of articles discussing proposed changes to the way juries are selected and the availability of preliminary inquiries. Currently both Crown and defence counsel have 12 peremptory challenges available to them when jury members are selected from a pool of candidates. That means each side has the ability to have 12 potential jurors excluded simply by saying so. No reason needs to be provided for having a juror dismissed. The proposed changes would remove these peremptory challenges.

In a powerful decision the Court of Appeal has dismissed the Crown's appeal from the decision of Madam Justice Bruce staying proceedings against John Nuttall and Amanda Korody on the basis that they were entrapped as part of an undercover RCMP operation. The case began when the pair were arrested on July 1, 2013 and has proceeded through a jury trial and entrapment hearing in Supreme Court. That was followed by a 3-day appeal hearing in January 2018.

On behalf of Jonathan Desbarats, Scott Wright, Kevin Westell and myself, Claire Hatcher, we are thrilled to announce the opening of our new criminal law firm, Pender Litigation, located in the heart of Downtown Vancouver, representing clients all over British Columbia - and beyond.