Welcome to Cases That Should Have Gone to the Supreme Court of Canada, But Didn’t! This week, lawyer Kyla Lee discusses mistrials and judicial bias.
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.
Glen Anderson was on trial for in one case: manslaughter and in another case: discharging a firearm in a negligent manner. Because of his status in the community, judges had to be brought in from an outside jurisdiction in order to hear his case. Two judges were brought in. One accepted a guilty plea for him in the manslaughter case, and the other judge heard a trial for him on the discharging a firearm case.
In the case of discharging a firearm, the judge called the parties into his chambers and asked Mr. Anderson, Crown Counsel and Mr. Anderson’s lawyers whether or not it would be appropriate if Mr. Anderson was convicted, to sentence him together with the manslaughter charge. This revealed that the judge had heard about the other case that was being heard from the other judge who was outside the community. No evidence of his guilty plea in that case had been led in the trial for the firearms charge. Because of this, Mr. Anderson thought that his trial had become unfair and applied for a mistrial on the basis of judicial bias.
Watch the video for more.
