From the Star:
"Toews said their references to the judge’s past Conservative connections had nothing to do with the Jaffer matter, and that he had told reporters that any decisions were up to the provincial prosecutors’ office."
This time on this point Vic Toews is completely right.
First, no Canadian judge would make a decision based on an expressly political basis -- that just doesn't happen here.
Second, and just as telling, the judge in this case had no legal authority to do anything other than accept the Crown's withdrawing the criminal charges.
To be clear, the judge behaved exactly properly and any suggestion of inappropriate conduct is unwarranted and quite unfair.
The Crown has the full authority to withdraw charges prior to the start of a trial. The judge has no say in the matter. So, even if the judge had wanted to keep the charges (and this part is weird -- why would a judge inclined to the Conservatives want to keep the charges? maybe to show they were tough on their own? it makes no sense) the judge could not so do.
Now, it may be that the Crown could have given a fuller explanation as to why the charges were being withdrawn but usually the Crown merely says "no reasonable prospect of conviction". As I said yesterday, the coke charges were probably dropped because of a bad search and the impaired likely failed on some technical point. It is not at all uncommon in such situations for the Crown to wihtdraw on the basis of getting a minor conviction for some provincial offence -- that's what happened here.
The special treatment Jaffer has gotten is media attention for an otherwise very ordinary matter.
10 comments:
BS. The judge was bent and forced a deal in the pretrial
Oops. Your off the popular narrative on this one. I can just see the grumpy party hacks demanding you get back on the bandwagon.
Now that we all agree that he should have got a harsher penalty, maybe we can bring back those mandatory minimum sentencing rules..
Ridenrain must be a Conservative because Raffer still wouldn't have gotten a harsher sentence if the minimum sentences bill was in place. Unless you want to amend it to have minimum sentences for charges that you were not only not convicted of but that were even dropped before the trial began. Birdbrain! And Morton, oh Morton, Ignatieff has already pronounce the Liberal position on this matter: if the Tories really are tough on crime the Minister of Justice should contest this decision.
So there you go. The facts or the law don't matter because Iggy has decided what the response must be.
I'm with ridenrain. Careful JM.
Don't get in between the Liberal party and their desire to smear the Harper gang. On second thought, best not to stop the majority of Canada's 'journalists' either.
You're likely to get run over.
I don't think it's a "Liberal" issue. The judge didn't do any thing -- he wasn't involved. More to the point I don't see this as a political case. Except that it does show that everyone gets caught up -- Conservatives as much as anyone.
So IF we want to point political fingers we need to point them at McGuinty.
It sounds to me that the OPP botched the investigation. Then again, we have known criminals getting off because no body can prove they knew illegal handguns were in the car.
I hope everyone is honestly looking to improve the justice system and not simply playing politics.
Michael Bryant
Yes. Michael Bryant -- get attacked by a crazy druggie bike loonie and defend yourself and you get charged with manslaughter. Jaffer got lucky and Bryant got unlucky. The system is just bs!
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