As an adjunct to a previous short piece I penned on Bill C-75, I believe it is important to further erode carefully protected rights that have been in place historically to root out Again, this government has sent a clear message that trials are to further high Joseph Neuberger, Neuberger & Partners LLP Criminal Defence Lawyers As an adjunct to a previous short piece I penned on Bill C-75, I believe it is important to note another significant blow to our rights in Canada. Among many changes brought in under Bill C-75, the Liberal government also struck a direct blow to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-criminal-defence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nrlawyers.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nrlawyers.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nrlawyers.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nrlawyers.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nrlawyers.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nrlawyers.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nrlawyers.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nrlawyers.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nrlawyers.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nrlawyers.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nnote another significant blow to our rights in Canada. Among many changes brought in
\nunder Bill C-75, the Liberal government also struck a direct blow to the right on an
\naccused person to pick an impartial jury in a criminal trial. In direct response to the
\nmurder trial in Saskatchewan, then Justice Minister Wilson-Raybould\u2019s out right
\ncondemnation of the jury\u2019s verdict resulted in the obliteration of a long-standing
\nprotection to ensure a fair and impartial jury.
\nThe issue in the high-profile trial was that the defence lawyer used appropriately 12
\nperemptory challenges to exclude potential jurors in order to obtain a fair and impartial
\njury. The then Justice Minister and the Prime Minister were outraged that a lawyer
\ncould do such a thing and that no person of indigenous background was on the jury
\npanel as the victim of the charge was indigenous. There is nothing wrong with wanting
\nto promote diversity on jury panels, but what the government did in response to a single
\ntrial verdict was to wipe out all peremptory challenges so that neither the Crown or
\ndefence have any individual option to exclude a potential juror based on her or his trial
\nexperience without a challenge for cause.
\nPeremptory challenges allow litigants to secure a fair and impartial jury and provides the
\nlitigants with some control over the jury selection process. It allows a defence lawyer<\/a> to
\nsearch for biases during the selection process without fear of alienating a potential juror.
\nFinally, the peremptory challenge serves as an aid when a challenge for cause is
\ndenied or not available.
\nThese challenges have a long-standing history in English and American law and have
\nserved a vital role in protecting accused persons those of identifiable racial
\nbackgrounds, from bias based on race and ethnicity. The new regime is confusing, and
\nCourts are not clear on how a jury selection process can proceed. The elimination of
\nperemptory challenges can result in the first 12 persons called being selected as the
\njury and there is no guarantee that this will be a representative group of our community
\nand certainly will not help root out biases or issues that may cause a potential juror from
\nbeing able to impartially decide a criminal trial. It certainly will NOT forward the
\nprofessed issue raised by the government to ensure a representative panel. But it will
\nserve to again erode our enshrined rights to a trial before a jury of our peers and will<\/p>\n
\nbias.<\/p>\n
\nconviction rates and not further the truth-seeking principle of criminal trials.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"