From Anita Szigeti
R v. Stanley
The OCA released this Judgment today. I'm a pretty happy camper as I have been flogging this particular horse for years.......the idea is to rescue our seemingly indefinitely detained ORB clients from forensic psychiatry and put them into the civil stream via a Community Treatment Order (CTO).
No doubt over time the implications of this Judgment will find a way to prejudice our clients' rights in some venue or other, but for today let's celebrate, shall we? OK, I will.
There are a few things of note here, one of which is the Court refused to return the matter to the Board and instead substituted an absolute discharge for this client, 30 years in the system when this arrived in the Court.
Also the hitherto relatively golden rule of only admitting fresh evidence unhelpful to the accused appears to have been broken and fresh evidence intended to assist the accused on appeal was admitted and ultimately dispositive.
If you represent long-term detainees under the ORB and the sole remaining concern appears to be how to ensure medication compliance in the event of an absolute discharge (perhaps coupled with a need to link the accused to community mental health services), this could be your guy's ticket out.
Here is the link.
http://www.ontariocourts.on.ca/decisions/2010/may/2010ONCA0324.htm
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