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Weird and Wacky Wednesdays: Volume Nineteen

On this week’s edition of Weird and Wacky Wednesdays, we look at a truly Canadian fraud case, where a BC-wide arrest warrant has been issued. Then, we turn our attention to the unexpected perils of unsanitary tattoo practices. Finally, an argument we all have had way too many times spirals out of control. Oh no!

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New Zealand Court Rules that Long Sentences Do Not Deter Crime

There is a tendency to believe that longer sentences deter individuals from offending, and re-offending. However, evidence proves that the recidivism rate of individuals given longer sentences is not significantly decreased due to their long sentence. This was recently borne out in New Zealand, where a brave judge finally called out the Crown on their reliance on the need for a long sentence to deter others.

In the case, Justice Matthew Palmer of the New Zealand court was faced with a difficult sentencing task: choosing whether to give a person a long jail term for a serious offence or not. Obviously that task is going to weigh heavily on the mind of any judge. This case was complicated by the fact that the judge was required to sentence two siblings for their role as couriers in a methamphetamine trafficking ring.

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Indirect Contact : Cases That Should Have Gone to the Supreme Court of Canada, But Didn’t!

Welcome to Cases That Should Have Gone to the Supreme Court of Canada, But Didn’t! This week, lawyer Kyla Lee discusses what constitutes indirect contact.

Acumen Law Corporation lawyer Kyla Lee gives her take on a made-in-Canada court case each week and discusses why these cases should have been heard by Canada’s highest court: the Supreme Court of Canada. …

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Indirect Contact : Cases That Should Have Gone to the Supreme Court of Canada, But Didn’t! Read More »

Driving Law with Kyla Lee: Episode 24

This week on the Driving Law Podcast, I speak with Scott Wonder. He is a fantastic DUI lawyer in Washington state, with particular expertise in the consequences of any administrative or criminal impaired driving incident on pilot licenses. Then, Paul Doroshenko and I discuss more updates to the Drager DrugTest 5000 situation as well as an app that is supposed to detect drug impaired driving. Is this app admissible in court? We dispel some myths that have been in the media lately.

Listen on SoundCloud, or subscribe on iTunes, or tune in on PlayerFM.

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The Twelve Weeks of DRE: Check For Muscle Tone

The next step in the Drug Recognition Evaluation is to check the subject’s body for muscle tone. The rationale behind this is that some drugs will make your muscles rigid and some will make them flaccid, and that will help the DRE officer determine the class or category of drug that a person has taken.

In Canada, this step is combined with the next of the twelve steps, which is to take the subject’s pulse and check for injection sites. However, as we are going by the twelve steps individually, I will deal with that next week.

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Weird and Wacky Wednesdays: Volume Eighteen

This week’s roundup of weird and wacky legal cases starts out grim, but I promise we end on a high note. First, we look at why on earth a person would want to rob themselves. Next, we delve into a woman facing twelve criminal charges for practicing veterinary medicine without a license. Finally, we examine a funny case about an impaired driving charge on an electric scooter and look at a few other instances in which a person might find themselves on the wrong side of a drunk driving law.

It’s sure to be interesting, albeit a little sad at the beginning.

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Traffic fine revenue is unfairly distributed among municipalities in BC

It’s about time we rethink how traffic fine revenue is shared in BC. This funding is shared between various municipalities around the province, with the government acting as arbiter of who gets some and how much. Municipalities ultimately don’t have much say on how big their slice of traffic revenue will be, or even if they get any in the first place. They can argue, they can appeal, but at the end of the day, the provincial government tells them how much they are going to receive. Municipalities lack bargaining chips. All they can do is shut up and take the money. Or not take the money, as is the case for many small towns.

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Presumptions of Regularity: Cases That Should Have Gone to the Supreme Court of Canada, But Didn’t!

Welcome to Cases That Should Have Gone to the Supreme Court of Canada, But Didn’t! This week, lawyer Kyla Lee discusses presumptions of regularity in regards to traffic signs.

Acumen Law Corporation lawyer Kyla Lee gives her take on a made-in-Canada court case each week and discusses why these cases should have been heard by Canada’s highest court: the Supreme Court of Canada. …

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Presumptions of Regularity: Cases That Should Have Gone to the Supreme Court of Canada, But Didn’t! Read More »

Driving Law with Kyla Lee: Episode 23

In this week’s episode of the Driving Law podcast, I speak with Paul Doroshenko of Acumen Law Corporation about a few issues we have previously covered. We start with an update on red light speed cameras in British Columbia, as well as a discussion of the fallout surrounding Edmonton’s use of noise detection cameras and devices. Then, we recap Talk Like a Pirate Day. Finally, Paul and I talk about Bill C-75, which we had discussed in Episode 1.

You can follow us on iTunes, PlayerFM, or on SoundCloud.

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The Twelve Weeks of DRE-Mas: Dark Room Examinations

As I mentioned in an earlier post about the Drug Recognition Evaluation Program, there are a series of steps related to assessing an individual’s eyes. As we’ve already seen, the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus and the Vertical Gaze Nystagmus tests are two such examinations, and each with their own set of flaws and reliability concerns. But there is more than meets the eye to the eye examinations in the DRE.

The next stage involves the assessment of the behaviour of a person’s pupils in response to various lighting conditions. I find this to be one of the more problematic aspects of the test, for reasons that will become clear in this post and in the coming weeks. So without further ado, here’s what happens when you and the officer go into a dark room together.

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