Your search
Results 160 resources
-
Giuseppina D’Agostino, 2008 53-2 McGill Law Journal 309, 2008 CanLIIDocs 166
-
This article examines the possibility that innocent accused might be compensated for the expense of defending themselves through cost awards or other payments. It reviews traditional and contemporary approaches, and challenges current Canadian thought on the subject on the basis that it does not address adequately the problem, and that it compromises unacceptably the presumption of innocence. Finally the article considers three leading cases which support the argument.
-
Bruce A MacFarlane, 2006 31-3 Manitoba Law Journal 403, 2006 CanLIIDocs 132
-
This paper draws from the wrongful convictions of women to interrogate the limits of dominant conceptions of wrongful conviction. Most North American innocence projects turn on a conception of demonstrable factual innocence. The paper argues that this focus is problematic as a matter of criminal law principle and presents particular difficulties for women. The paper identifies that family violence forms the primary context for both the conviction of women for violent crimes, and for women's wrongful convictions. Taking two key examples of family violence – child homicide and intimate partner violence – we illustrate that the prevailing focus on demonstrable factual innocence fits awkwardly with identified wrongful convictions in these areas, and argue that this focus may deflect attention from unidentified miscarriages of justice. We suggest that focusing on factual innocence undermines the criminal justice system's proper focus on state responsibilities, including the responsibility to protect women and children from harm, and the asymmetric burden of proof that applies in criminal cases.
-
The Canadian Registry of Wrongful Convictions www.wrongfulconviction.ca .like similar registries in the United States and the United Kingdom, was designed to facilitate research on patterns and trends in wrongful convictions. As of its launch in February 2023, 15 of 83 remedied wrongful convictions or 17% were the result of guilty pleas by the accused. This is a similar percentage as found in a UK registry and lower than the 27% of guilty plea wrongful convictions found in the US registry. Forty percent of the guilty plea wrongful convictions were entered by women. Most of these involved the flawed expert testimony of Charles Smith about the cause of baby deaths and the majority of all remedied guilty plea wrongful convictions were for imagined crimes that did not happen. Almost half (7 of 15) of Canada’s false guilty pleas were taken from racialized people including three Indigenous men, one Black and Indigenous man, another Black man and a Brown man who had recently immigrated from India. Two of the fifteen false guilty pleas were taken from accused persons who had diagnosed mental health and cognitive challenges. With the exclusion of one false guilty plea to a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment and ineligibility for parole for 10 years, the average sentence in the remaining 14 cases was 10 months with evidence of “lop-sided” pleas especially in the cases involving Charles Smith and 2 of the 14 received sentences of time already served.
-
Drawing on Rachel Dioso-Villa''s repository of wrongful convictions published in this issue, this article examines known cases of wrongful convictions of Indigenous persons in Australia and Canada. It finds that Indigenous people are over-represented among the wrongfully convicted in relation to their representation in the population in both Australia and Canada. At the same time, there are likely many undiscovered wrongful convictions of Indigenous persons especially when the over-representation of Indigenous men and women in prison is considered. A factor in this likely under-representation of Indigenous people among remedied wrongful convictions may be the incentives that accused, especially Indigenous women, face to plead guilty even if they are not guilty. This finding underlines some of the dangers of limiting wrongful convictions to cases of proven factual innocence and not including among the wrongfully convicted those who may have valid defences such as self-defence.
-
Lee Stuesser, 2006 31-3 Manitoba Law Journal 543, 2006 CanLIIDocs 135
-
Malini Vjaykumar, 2018 51-1 UBC Law Review 161, 2018 CanLIIDocs 11248
-
Bruce H Wildsmith, 1991 55-1 Saskatchewan Law Review 97, 1991 CanLIIDocs 529
-
Graham Zellick, 2006 31-3 Manitoba Law Journal 555, 2006 CanLIIDocs 136
Explore
Resource type
Publication year
-
Between 1900 and 1999
(44)
-
Between 1910 and 1919
(1)
- 1918 (1)
- Between 1930 and 1939 (2)
- Between 1950 and 1959 (2)
- Between 1960 and 1969 (6)
- Between 1970 and 1979 (5)
- Between 1980 and 1989 (11)
- Between 1990 and 1999 (17)
-
Between 1910 and 1919
(1)
-
Between 2000 and 2025
(116)
- Between 2000 and 2009 (37)
- Between 2010 and 2019 (41)
- Between 2020 and 2025 (38)