It was a win-win kind of day

Spent the day in court yesterday. They weren't actually my files, but I was supervising them...aka providing the words/argument to use.

The morning was a guilty plea that we had attempted to negotiate with the Crown. The Crown was completely unreasonable, so we went in without a joint submission and pled our case to the judge. Not only did the judge agree with my argument, but when the Crown piped up to try and amend the sentence and add on some terms, the judge pretty much dressed her down for being a bitch, and for being disrespectful. This gave me extreme satisfaction - not only were my arguments validated, but so was my competency. As students we often get disregarded by the Crown...we have to work twice as hard to get even a modicum of respect. It's nice when you get a judge who looks beyond your junior status and listens to your words.

The afternoon was a trial on a possession of marijuana charge. Arguing drug charges is always very interesting. As a senior defence lawyer said to me yesterday, "a drug charge without a Charter argument is called a guilty plea." In this case the drugs were obtained subsequent to a search incident to arrest. However, in our opinion the arrest was illegal because the officer lacked reasonable and probable grounds. If the arrest was illegal, then the search was warrantless and, barring exigent circumstances, illegal. The judge agreed, the evidence was excluded and the charges dismissed.

I got into an argument the other night with a cop at a bar. Now granted he was drunk and kind of beligerent, but he basically said that he would do what ever was necessary to put these "criminals" (referring to my clients) in jail. He basically called me, and all defence lawyers, scum. He didn't like it very much when I told him that by "doing what ever was necessary" and not following protocol and respecting Charter rights, he was making my job much easier. Cause the way I see it is that, yes, I am defending people who often have committed crimes. But if the evidence is there, and obtained properly, then these people will be convicted - most likely they will plead guilty. These cases create law, and that law binds all of us in this country. That law creates limits for authority to act within, and protects the liberty rights of all citizens: criminal or not. So, by enforcing the Charter rights of those within the criminal justice system, we are infact enforcing the Charter rights of everyone. If we allow unlawful arrests, and warrantless search and seizures of those suspected of crimes, where does that stop? What is a "suspicion" anyways? A hunch? Is that good enough? In my view it becomes a slippery slope towards a police state ESPECIALLY in this time where the government sanctions, increasingly, invasions into civil liberties. So if you look at it that way, I'm not scum...I'm a freedom fighter. Kidding, kidding...sort of.