I hadn't.
The media reports about mandatory minimums were just wrong. Yesterday, as blogged, the Supreme Court said, in general, misconduct by the state does not justify reducing a sentence below that set out in the Criminal Code.
The Court did not consider the nature of mandatory sentences generally or whether they offended, in specific circumstances, the prohibition against inappropriate punishment.
James Morton
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4 comments:
Good catch!
The constitutionality of minimum sentences was not attacked in this case.
The Court did say there may be situations where a reduction below the minimum sentence may be appropriate:
"Although, as we have seen above, the proper interpretation and application of the sentencing process will allow courts to effectively address most of the situations where Charter breaches are alleged, there may be exceptions to this general rule. I do not foreclose, but do not need to address in this case, the possibility that, in some exceptional cases, sentence reduction outside statutory limits, under s. 24(1) of the Charter, may be the sole effective remedy for some particularly egregious form of misconduct by state agents in relation to the offence and to the offender. In that case, the validity of the law would not be at stake, the sole concern being the specific conduct of those state agents."
Agreed to both comments -- we'll see what future cases bring!
Wasn't this something the SCC examined long ago though? Mandatory minimums are not new, and they have come before the SCC in two cases I can recall.
R. v. Morrisey, 2000 SCC 39, [2000]
R. v. Ferguson, 2008 SCC 6, [2008]
I think the bar is set VERY high with regard to suggesting that a mandatory minimum sentence is unconstitutional.
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