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canadian criminal justice problems
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racial discrimination in the us justice system
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Among the many differing cases of wrongfully convicted Canadians, the case of Guy Paul Morin is very interesting. There were many issues that caused an innocent man from Queensville, Ontario to be convicted of the murder of Christine Jessop. We’re going to look at how the police failed to conduct a thorough investigation, how the court system failed, and how cases like this can be preventing in the future.
Christine Jessop was a nine year old girl who after bring dropped off by the school bus at her home in Queensville, decided to ride her bike to the park nearby to meet with her friends. After stopping to buy some gum at the local store, she was last seen walking her bike up her driveway by her friend Kim Warren. She did not keep her appointment with her friend at the park, and would never be seen alive again (Anderson & Anderson, 2009). This small town instantly became involved in the search for the missing girl, but with very little evidence to go on time passed, and hope began to diminish for the safe return home of Jessop. On New Year’s Eve 1984, eighty-nine days after Jessop went missing, her body was found badly decomposed in a bush by Fred Patterson fifty-five kilometers from Queensville. An autopsy would later revival that she was raped and mutilated (Anderson & Anderson, 2009). The police still did not have a suspect in the case nor did they have any leads, but now that her body was found the police and the small town were the topic of media, increasing pressure on the police to figure out what had happened to this little girl.
On the night that Jessop’s body was found, the first snowfall of the season was challenging police to find any evidence related to the case at the scene. The police conducted their search ...
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...ing of key evidence he was not found guilty. This goes to prove that although in this case Morin was ultimately found not guilty, there are other cases where the person who is actually responsible for the crime has been released for the same reasons. In this case the actual person who murdered Christine has not been found, although had the police widened their suspect list they may have found the murderer.
Works Cited
Anderson, D., & Anderson, B. (2009). Manufacturing Guilt. In Wrongful Convictions in Canada Second Edition (pp. 65-82). Black Point, Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing.
Katz, H. (2011). Justice Miscarried: Inside Wrongful Convictions in Canada. Toronto, Canada: Dundurn.
Preservation of Crime Scenes and Evidence. (2013, November 18). Retrieved from Correctional Service Canada: http://www.csc-scc.gc.ca/politiques-et-lois/568-4-cd-eng.shtml
On June 19th of 1990, Robert Baltovich’s girlfriend Elizabeth Bain went missing. Elizabeth told her family that she was going to check the tennis schedules at her school, the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus. She never returned, but her car was eventually recovered. It was found with blood on the backseat, with forensic tests showing that it was Elizabeth’s. With no clear evidence, the “solving” of the case was completely based on eyewitness testimonies, which eventually had Robert arrested for the murder of his girlfriend.
In June 2014, Justin Bourque was charged with three counts of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder after shooting three RCMP officers and wounding two others in Moncton, New Brunswick (Chronicle Herald 2014). He was subsequently convicted and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for seventy-five years (Chronicle Herald 2014). Bourque’s sentence is unprecedented and is the longest sentence in Canadian history (Chronicle Herald 2014). A Canadian judge has not given a harsh a punishment since the final executions in 1962 (Chronicle Herald 2014).
The first of the victims were two British backpackers who were touring Australia called Caroline Clark and Joanne Walters. They went missing in April of 1992 and were found in September of that year. They were found in a part of Belanglo State Forest known as “Executioner's Drop”. Joanne had been stabbed, possibly to the point of paralysis, and her zipper was undone, but the
The wrongful conviction of Tammy Marquardt was also aided by the misconduct of the parties involved. Goudge (2008) claimed that Smith, other medical experts and prosecutors operated with a “think dirty” mindset, which presumes guilt first, rather than the ‘innocent until proven guilty‘ doctrine highly valued in the justice system. “The Goudge Commission found the actual words ‘think dirty’ in instructions from Ontario’s chief coroners, pathologists and police chiefs in 1995” (Shapiro, 2011). In Ms. Marquardt’s case, there is no way to conceal the fact that the professionals of the adversarial system did not satisfactorily perform their roles. It has already been demonstrated that Dr. Charles Smith “saw his role as supporting the prosecution,
One of the few purposes of the Section 11(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is to ensure that the right for a fair trial for every person criminally tried on Canadian soil and the right for them to be tried within a reasonable time. This ensures that when the trial is commenced in court while the evidence is fresh and available during the trial. However, trials in the Canadian justice system can be delayed due to many factors in which the criticism could be on either the Crown or the accused. This essay will examine the Supreme Court of Canada case R. v. Morin. In this case, the accused was charged for impaired driving and the trial date set 399 days after the judge scheduled the trial. In total this was 444-days after the accused was charged with the impaired driving offence. The final verdict of this case set a precedent in the justice system due to the decision by the Ontario Court of appeal that decided that the trial delay was reasonable due to lack of prejudice to the accused during the delay.
The legal system is considered a place where justice is served and criminals are sent to prison. However, this is not always the case, as seen with Robert Baltovich, who suffered a serious miscarriage of justice. Baltovich was accused and unfairly convicted for a murder that he did not commit. The investigation into the murder of Elizabeth Bain was unfairly skewed to gain a conviction against Baltovich. The bias against Baltovich, in the murder investigation, and his subsequent trial was a disservice to him and to Canadian society.
he court may overturn any conviction and grant a new trial for many reasons including Jury bias, Insufficient evidence to support a conviction, Misconduct on the part of the prosecutor, and newly discovered evidence meaning evidence that was not known during trial. The season one podcast “Serial” by Sarah Koenig analyzed the structure of a murder case from 1999 and while doing so enlightened many people of new evidence and has everyone questioning what happened the day Hae Min Lee Died. However in the question of whether or not Adnan Syed should receive a new trial, the answer is clear. The main evidence that led to Adnan Syed's imprisonment was the testimony given by Jay and how that matched up with the cell phone records the day of the alleged murder. Not only was there insufficient evidence given in the inconsistencies told by primary witness Jay, there was an alibi for Adnan and a warning sheet was found after the trial stating that the cell phone records may not be reliable information for locating. This newly discovered and insufficient evidence give more than enough reason for a new trial.
On July 15th, 2008, Caylee Anthony was reported missing by her grandmother Cindy Anthony. Cindy Anthony in the report stated that she hadn’t seen her grand-daughter Caylee for a month and that she and her husband were suspicious because their daughter Casey’s car reeked of decay, as if a dead body had been stored inside the vehicle for days. Caylee and her mother resided with Casey Anthony’s parents. However, Cindy Anthony claimed that Casey had given different explanations about Caylee's whereabouts before telling Cindy that she hadn’t seen her own daughter for several weeks. When questioned by authorities, Casey told the detectives several lies: stating the child had been kidnapped by her nanny on June 9, and that Casey had been trying to contact the nanny to find her daughter. Preceding this information, Casey Anthony was convicted and charged with first degree murder in 2008, but pleaded not guilty ...
The symbol of the Canadian judicial system is the balanced scales of justice. When a wrongful act is committed, the scales of justice are greatly misplaced and require a solution to counterbalance the crime and restore balance. Additionally, the scales represent the idea that law should be viewed objectively and the determination of innocence should be made without bias. The Canadian criminal justice system encapsulates the idea of the scale of justice, to control crime and impose penalties on those who violate the law. One of the most important aspects of this system is that an individual charged with a criminal offence is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The current system has two prevailing methods involved in the process of dealing with crime: Retributive and restorative justice. This paper will analyze aspects of retributive justice and restorative justice, with reference to their respective philosophies, for the purpose of finding which is more effective at achieving justice and maintaining balance.
Welsh, B., & Irving, M. (2005). Crime and punishment in Canada, 1981-1999. Crime and Justice, 33, 247-294. Retrieved from http://library.mtroyal.ca:2063/stable/3488337?&Search=yes&searchText=canada&searchText=crime&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dcrime%2Bin%2Bcanada%26acc%3Don%26wc%3Don&prevSearch=&item=18&ttl=33894&returnArticleService=showFullText
In the quiet New York town of Savona, Eric Smith, age thirteen, intercepted four year old Derrick Robie on his way to a park recreation program and offered to show him a shortcut. Hesitatingly, Derrick set off with Eric. He never made it to the park. That same day the little boy's savagely beaten body was discovered outside the park area (Seifert 98).
In the year 1970, the Canadian government founded the Law Reform Commission of Canada to ensure the progression of law making and to make recommendations for legal changes . The Law Reform Commission of Canada is constantly importing and suggesting proposals towards the criminal code of Canada. During the year of 1985, t...
Any of these reforms, if they had been done during Hayes’s and Matthews’s cases, could have prevented their wrongful convictions concerning the murder. Between interrogation reform and eyewitness reform, any change in the direction of validating what actually occurred or making sure information was presented in an unbiased manner would have shown great differences in what happened to these two men. These two individuals, wrongly convicted due to two of the six main faults in the process, are now part of 16 exonerated cases from the Innocence project that involved two people accused of a single crime.
Gaensslen, R. E., Harris, H A., & Lee, H. (2008). Introduction to Forensic Science and Criminalistics. New York, NY: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. .
Collecting evidence from a crime scene is a crucial aspect of solving crimes. Before evidence can be seized, there must first be a court order approving the search of the crime scene and the seizure of the evidence found at the scene. Standard protocol for officers is for them to always use latex gloves, avoid plastic bags, double wrap small objects, package each object separately, and to collect as much evidence as possible. It is better to have too much evidence than to not have enough. There are countless amounts of evidence that can be found at a crime scene.