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Nicole and Amine Nayel have become the human faces of the court delay crisis.
The Barrhaven couple spent Monday in Ontario’s court of appeal listening to prosecutors press their case for a new trial for the man accused of killing their son, Fouad Nayel.
It was the latest stop in a five-year legal odyssey that began with their son’s sudden disappearance in June 2012, a desperate five-month search that took them from Ottawa to Petawawa and back, only to discover their son’s body in the woods near Calabogie.
But the relief that came with the arrest and first-degree murder charges against former soldier Adam Picard in December 2012 was replaced with utter sorrow almost four years later. The case against Picard fell apart on the eve of his trial, the result of what a judge deemed a “culture of complacency” that runs though Canada’s justice system when it came to the accused’s rights to a timely trial.
“I looked at it, and this June, this Father’s Day, it’s going to be five years for us,” said Nicole. “And it feels like I am starting all over again. I haven’t got the chance to grieve, to do any of that, because all that it is is court. They do something, and then start again from square one. I don’t understand why. It doesn’t make sense to me.”
On Wednesday, the senate committee on legal and constitutional affairs urged the federal government to amend the Criminal Code to allow for reduced sentences or the awarding of costs instead of a stay of proceedings for cases involving serious charges such as murder or the sexual assault of children that drag on too long.
It was among 50 recommendations made by the committee in an effort to speed up the country’s courts and avoid more cases being thrown out, following the Supreme Court decision last July in R. v. Jordan that set time limits of 18 months in provincial court and 30 months in Superior court for criminal cases to be completed.
It is the grief, anxiety and pain suffered by families such as the Nayels that have shaken the public’s confidence in the justice system, according to committee chair Bob Runciman.
Runciman said there is no reason the federal government can’t improve its “snail-like” pace of appointing new Superior court judges by having them ready to appoint on the day of a known retirement.
The committee also recommended outdated methods of administering courthouses and scheduling matters before judges must be replaced with computerized systems that facilitate cooperation, permit increased information sharing and improve efficiency. And procedural matters could be moved from judges to other judicial officials like they do in the federal court, while preliminary inquiries could be restricted or eliminated altogether, they said.
The committee didn’t know exactly how many cases had been stayed across the country, but there have been eight reported cases stayed in Ottawa between the time the Jordan decision was released and the end of April, according to Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General. Across Ontario, there have been 76 stays granted. In total, 356 applications for stays have been filed, although 125 have been dismissed, the province said.
Runciman acknowledged the changes they proposed were dramatic and would require a new mindset for many. Most of the committee’s recommendations were directed at the federal justice minister.
But Ottawa lawyer Michael Crystal said he believes remedies such as awarding costs for an accused who experienced unnecessary delay would be “terribly ineffective” because you “can’t put a chill on the province’s prosecutions and the way it conducts itself.”
“On a resource basis, it would be crippling,” Crystal said. Reducing sentences “is presuming someone will be found guilty. It doesn’t deal with people who have their matters delayed and they are ultimately acquitted,” he said.
Crystal is representing James Cody, an alleged drug trafficker who had charges stayed after a five-year delay in bringing the case to trial before an appeal court reversed the decision. The Supreme Court is expected to deliver a ruling Friday in the Cody case that should clarify how delay should be assessed in the context of the Jordan decision.
Crystal said provincial justice ministers have already started “reshaping” how they do things to accommodate for the impact of Jordan and that the Supreme Court should be allowed to guide the law – and the remedy – when it comes to delay. In Ontario, that includes the appointment of 13 new judges, 36 new prosecutors, new court staff, bail reform and a triaging of criminal cases in danger of exceeding the Jordan time limits.
“It’s going to take a little time but I think they are well on their way,” said Crystal.
Nicole Nayel said she didn’t need a study to know that things were broken, since she saw it firsthand. And it shouldn’t have taken the current crisis to know they needed to be fixed, she added.
“These solutions should have been dealt with years ago. We shouldn’t have ended up in this situation,” she said.
Nayel believes the courts need to prioritize the most serious cases above all others. And technology needs to be improved to keep courts from grinding to a standstill whenever there is a problem.
The seemingly endless and unnecessary adjournments in some cases, which were touched upon in the Senate report, are “disgusting,” Nayel said.
“It costs them for everybody to show up in the courtroom and get sent home with nothing achieved,” she said. “You could never go to work and say at the last minute, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not ready, I’m leaving.'”
Victims are the ones who are punished, she said.
“I am sick and tired of hearing about delay. The way I look at it, on a murder charge, it doesn’t matter, it shouldn’t count the delay,” said Nayel.
aseymour@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/andrew_seymour
查看原文...
The Barrhaven couple spent Monday in Ontario’s court of appeal listening to prosecutors press their case for a new trial for the man accused of killing their son, Fouad Nayel.
It was the latest stop in a five-year legal odyssey that began with their son’s sudden disappearance in June 2012, a desperate five-month search that took them from Ottawa to Petawawa and back, only to discover their son’s body in the woods near Calabogie.
But the relief that came with the arrest and first-degree murder charges against former soldier Adam Picard in December 2012 was replaced with utter sorrow almost four years later. The case against Picard fell apart on the eve of his trial, the result of what a judge deemed a “culture of complacency” that runs though Canada’s justice system when it came to the accused’s rights to a timely trial.
“I looked at it, and this June, this Father’s Day, it’s going to be five years for us,” said Nicole. “And it feels like I am starting all over again. I haven’t got the chance to grieve, to do any of that, because all that it is is court. They do something, and then start again from square one. I don’t understand why. It doesn’t make sense to me.”
On Wednesday, the senate committee on legal and constitutional affairs urged the federal government to amend the Criminal Code to allow for reduced sentences or the awarding of costs instead of a stay of proceedings for cases involving serious charges such as murder or the sexual assault of children that drag on too long.
It was among 50 recommendations made by the committee in an effort to speed up the country’s courts and avoid more cases being thrown out, following the Supreme Court decision last July in R. v. Jordan that set time limits of 18 months in provincial court and 30 months in Superior court for criminal cases to be completed.
It is the grief, anxiety and pain suffered by families such as the Nayels that have shaken the public’s confidence in the justice system, according to committee chair Bob Runciman.
Runciman said there is no reason the federal government can’t improve its “snail-like” pace of appointing new Superior court judges by having them ready to appoint on the day of a known retirement.
The committee also recommended outdated methods of administering courthouses and scheduling matters before judges must be replaced with computerized systems that facilitate cooperation, permit increased information sharing and improve efficiency. And procedural matters could be moved from judges to other judicial officials like they do in the federal court, while preliminary inquiries could be restricted or eliminated altogether, they said.
The committee didn’t know exactly how many cases had been stayed across the country, but there have been eight reported cases stayed in Ottawa between the time the Jordan decision was released and the end of April, according to Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General. Across Ontario, there have been 76 stays granted. In total, 356 applications for stays have been filed, although 125 have been dismissed, the province said.
Runciman acknowledged the changes they proposed were dramatic and would require a new mindset for many. Most of the committee’s recommendations were directed at the federal justice minister.
But Ottawa lawyer Michael Crystal said he believes remedies such as awarding costs for an accused who experienced unnecessary delay would be “terribly ineffective” because you “can’t put a chill on the province’s prosecutions and the way it conducts itself.”
“On a resource basis, it would be crippling,” Crystal said. Reducing sentences “is presuming someone will be found guilty. It doesn’t deal with people who have their matters delayed and they are ultimately acquitted,” he said.
Crystal is representing James Cody, an alleged drug trafficker who had charges stayed after a five-year delay in bringing the case to trial before an appeal court reversed the decision. The Supreme Court is expected to deliver a ruling Friday in the Cody case that should clarify how delay should be assessed in the context of the Jordan decision.
Crystal said provincial justice ministers have already started “reshaping” how they do things to accommodate for the impact of Jordan and that the Supreme Court should be allowed to guide the law – and the remedy – when it comes to delay. In Ontario, that includes the appointment of 13 new judges, 36 new prosecutors, new court staff, bail reform and a triaging of criminal cases in danger of exceeding the Jordan time limits.
“It’s going to take a little time but I think they are well on their way,” said Crystal.
Nicole Nayel said she didn’t need a study to know that things were broken, since she saw it firsthand. And it shouldn’t have taken the current crisis to know they needed to be fixed, she added.
“These solutions should have been dealt with years ago. We shouldn’t have ended up in this situation,” she said.
Nayel believes the courts need to prioritize the most serious cases above all others. And technology needs to be improved to keep courts from grinding to a standstill whenever there is a problem.
The seemingly endless and unnecessary adjournments in some cases, which were touched upon in the Senate report, are “disgusting,” Nayel said.
“It costs them for everybody to show up in the courtroom and get sent home with nothing achieved,” she said. “You could never go to work and say at the last minute, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not ready, I’m leaving.'”
Victims are the ones who are punished, she said.
“I am sick and tired of hearing about delay. The way I look at it, on a murder charge, it doesn’t matter, it shouldn’t count the delay,” said Nayel.
aseymour@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/andrew_seymour
查看原文...
