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New rules November 2, 2010 Janice Tibbetts They’re the kind of trials that go on for months, sometimes years — biker-gang trials, the Air India bombing case, the Willie Pickton serial-murder trial, and increasingly, routine murder and sex-assault trials. Justice Minister Rob Nicholson will announce legislation today designed to reduce drawn-out “mega-trials” that he has said are consuming too much money and court time and “undermining public confidence in the law.” The legislation will be tabled in response to the perception that many criminal trials have taken on a life of their own. Federal changes have been in the works for six years, after a major Hells Angels trial in Montreal in which 17 people faced various charges of murder, drug trafficking and organized crime came to a halt after six months when the trial judge stepped down after he was reprimanded by the Canadian Judicial Council for insulting a defence lawyer in a bail hearing. One recommendation, which Nicholson said in August that he and his provincial counterparts have endorsed, would require any pre-trial motions for a case that ends in an aborted trial to be binding for any subsequent trials instead of going through the whole process again. Other recommendations, for which there is a general consensus in mega-trial
studies, include empowering judges to intervene earlier to be on top of
both pre-trial proceedings and lawyers’ courtroom behaviour. |