Last week the Court of Appeal stayed charges against an accused in R v. Tran because he was beaten by police who broke his jaw. The beating was motivated by an attempt to get Mr. Tran to confess.
It is hard to think of a more serious breach of civil rights than to have a confession beaten out of you. Had a confession been obtained there is no doubt it would be inadmissible.
But no confession was obtained and the case against Mr. Tran was based on other evidence.
And the offences Mr. Tran was convicted of were appalling -- sexual assault, threatening, cutting a victim with a knife, threatening a child. At trial Mr. Tran was convicted and the judge sentenced with regard to the police brutality -- he reduced the sentence.
The Court of Appeal went further and stayed the charge -- I think that was wrong. I've written on this story before but have been generally interpreted to support the Court of Appeal decision.
I don't.
I respect the decision and understand why it was made. Preventing police attempts to beat confessions from accused is essential -- but here I think the crimes too serious to let go -- sexual assault, and a brutal one, (among other crimes) is not something to overlook for procedural reasons, even very good procedural reasons.
I think the trial judge was right.
6 comments:
and what of the assault by the Police Officer? Is that not a crime that is equally serious, if not more, because of the abuse of the position of authority? How many years will the police officer spend in jail?
Nobody spends years in jail for assault in Canada, Nony. Granted the Cop will probably get a lighter than usual sentence.
They should've just shot the bastard.
Why is it so bad to beat this guy up? If a bit of physical coercion gets valuable information out of this guy then the courts should allow it. Maybe this went to far, but did they go to far deliberately? I doubt it. Physical coercion should be a legitimate police tool in certain circumstances, and I think this case is one of those.
Anon 1 - agreed -- a crime by police is a double crime as it involves and abuse of power too.
My issue with this simply that Tran is getting off one a set of very serious crimes because he was the victim of another set of serious crimes. Those crimes did not affect the outcome of Tran's trial nor change any factor in the circumstances of his crimes or guilt. The proper remedy for Tran was the same remedy the rest of Canadians get: His attackers should have been charged and convicted if guilty. And an even more delicious consequence is that Tran would likely find out how little his attackers would receive in punishment as the court, I'm sure, would concentrate on rehabilitating these police officers.
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