You face murder charges -- you can resolve them with a plea to negligence and 90 days in jail -- what would you do?
Plea negotiations can lead to bad results sometimes:
From the Star.ca:
Dinesh Kumar walked up the temple steps and paused while a priest sounded a bell.
Opening a rich red and gold shawl, the men draped it around a statue of Durga Mata, the all-powerful Hindu goddess responsible for moral order and righteousness in the universe.
The ritual, said Laxminarayan Kumbaria, priest at the Jai Durga Hindu Society on Markham Rd., is a form of giving thanks for wishes that come true.
And that finally happened for Kumar on Thursday.
Nearly two decades after a prominent pathologist’s mistakes wrongly implicated him in the death of his 5-week-old son, Guarov, the Ontario Court of Appeal quashed Kumar’s conviction and acquitted him outright.
“I am very happy,” said Kumar, 44, who trained as a goldsmith in Punjab and immigrated to Canada in 1991, only to find himself quickly enmeshed in a legal nightmare.
Speaking on behalf of a three-judge panel, Justice Marc Rosenberg told Kumar the court appreciates “the terrible toll this case has taken on you and your family over these last 20 years.
“We can now say the conviction in your case was unreasonable,” he told Kumar, who was accompanied by his wife, Veena, and son Saurob, 19.
Forensic experts from North America and England who have examined the evidence in the case since 2006 have concluded Gaurov probably died of natural causes resulting from a birth injury.
But back in 1992, Dr. Charles Smith, once Canada’s superstar of pediatric forensic pathology, concluded after performing an autopsy that the child had been shaken to death.
Kumar was charged with second-degree murder.
Despite the seriousness of the charge, the Crown offered him an incredible deal just six months into the case, telling Kumar that if he pleaded guilty to criminal negligence causing death, he would get a 90-day jail sentence to be served on weekends.
He took the deal.
5 comments:
Why would someone plead guilty to a crime they didn't commit?
Only he knows....................................................................
Were there suggestions to this man that immigration issues might arise for himself and / or his family? I suspect that there were. If not, there is not always a reasonable expectation of a fair trial when someone claims that they have scientific proof on their side.
I think we should get the figures on how many of the cases that were botched by this pathologist included people who made confession to things that they did not in fact do. We should be as alarmed by this as by the testimonies of a rogue pathologist. How common is the false confession? Are the police and prosecution set up in a way that false confessions are just "collateral damage"? AND, is it worth building a bunch of new prisons if, say 10% of convictions are based on false confessions? Who know? Is anyone going to look into this?
SM
CBC coverage states that the crown not only offered a 90 day (weekend)sentence in exchange for a guilty plea - but also offered to return his one year old son who had been taken into (CAS?) protection when he was charged. This is a stunning revelation. Do the crown and CAS routinely trade kids for confessions? If the crown believed Kumar was guilty then he represented a danger to the son. But despite the danger - the crown returned him to the very place from which he was taken due to the possible danger - and did this in exchange for a confession. It is a "crime" that the crown would put kids in danger in this way. On the flip side - the crown may have been pretty sure Kumar was innocent and therefore not a danger to his son. Therefore the crown could trade the son for the confession and in so doing - avoid the embarrasment of admitting the case was pathetically shakey from the get-go. Either way - that the crown and CAS trade kids for confessions is unbelievable. Isn't the CAS supposed to protect kids. And why is the CAS taking a hard line in other Smith cases even after their convictions have been overturned but is happily sending kids (Kumars son) back home as part of a plea bargained confession in a second degree murder case. Lastly, if the crown knew Kumar was no threat to his one year old because he didn't committ the crime - then the trade to elicit a confession amounts to extortion. Either way - this aspect of the crowns shenanigans is pathetic.
It's hard not to see the plea process as some sort of extortion. If you do not plead guilty, then you may face a substantially greater penalty than if you pleaded guilty. That creates a built-in incentive to plead guilty.
I don't know whether there's a better way to do it. But certainly, the existing system leads me to question guilty pleas at face value, that is, when I hear of a guilty plea, I do not infer that the person is in fact guilty.
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