Tagged: Ross Landry
Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat
I don’t know which is more disturbing: The NDP Government’s success in persuading a Supreme Court justice to impose a $5,725 fine on a man found innocent of the crime with which he had been charged; or Finance Minister Graham Steele’s crowing about this ‘victory” in a news release.
Acting Justice Minister Graham Steele [not exactly as illustrated
In our system, a not-guilty verdict is supposed to be tantamount to a finding of innocence. Instead, taking cues from the Queen of Hearts (“First the verdict; then the trial!”), Nova Scotia now imposes criminal sanctions without regard for criminal trials.
To circumvent the presumption of innocence in Reynolds’s case, the justice system allowed police to launch a second trial, one that masqueraded as a civil proceeding. The pretence liberated cops and prosecutors from the strict standard of presumed innocence. It enabled them to punish Reynolds, effectively finding him guilty, not beyond a reasonable doubt, but despite one.
The courts, to their shame, let them get away with it.
Like Justice Minister Ross Landry, for whom he was acting yesterday, Steele couched his government’s end-run around the presumption of innocence in bland platitudes, describing the abuse as “a tool” that “government and police are collaborative using” to deter crime. You can call horse turds road apples, but it won’t make them smell any sweeter.
The presumption of innocence is a defining characteristic of a free and democratic society. It is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of the Council of Europe.
Free societies insist on this principle for the simple reason that most people are not criminals. The Latin maxim quoted in the headline above is sometimes more fully rendered as Ei incumbit probatio, qui dicit, non qui negat; cum per rerum naturam factum negantis probatio nulla sit – “The proof lies upon him who affirms, not upon him who denies; since, by the nature of things, he who denies a fact cannot produce any proof.”
The presumption of innocence means the state bears the entire burden of proof, and the defendant none. An accused person need not testify or call witnesses, and his failure to do so cannot be taken as evidence of guilt. Neither jury nor judge can draw any inference from the fact a defendant has been charged with a crime. The case must be decided solely on evidence presented at trial.
Does all this make it hard for police to put away bad guys? You betcha, and for good reason: you really don’t want to live in a country where police find it easy to throw citizens in prison.
Apologists for the Civil Forfeiture Act try to brush these misgivings aside on the flimsy pretext that it concerns civil not criminal matters. Steele’s news release puts the lie to that fig leaf in the first sentence, which describes the act as, “legislation that helps make sure that crime doesn’t pay” [my emphasis]. To which Steele himself adds, “The success of this case sends a message that crime will not pay in Nova Scotia” [my emphasis]. It’s all about crime, and nothing but crime.
By pretending seizures under Nova Scotia Civil Forfeiture are civil in nature, when everyone can see they are criminal, the government and the court have turned criminal safeguards upside down. They have enabled cops to punish suspects whose guilt they cannot prove. This is a clear abuse of democratic principles we fought wars over, and it brings the justice system into disrepute. Not to mention Graham Steele, Ross Landry, and the NDP Government.
Presumption of innocence: a primer for Nova Scotia’s NDP
Back on the last day of June, CBC Radio’s Information Morning program put Justice Minister Ross Landry on the hot seat for the Dexter Government’s embrace of the Civil Forfeiture Act, a right-wing scheme to short-circuit the presumption of innocence. More accurately, the program’s listers put him on the hot seat.
The act lets cops seize property from suspects as long as they can convince a court the assets probably came from criminal activity. No proof needed. Just probability. As a standard of justice, it’s more Queen of Hearts (“First the verdict; then the trial”) than Justice Blackstone (“Better ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer”).
Callers to the CBC understand the principle, even if the NDP Justice Minister does not.
Caller One: “Is it too difficult for our highly trained police service to obtain a conviction? Maybe it is. It would certainly explain why they’ve had to find an easier way to go, but it doesn’t explain why we are letting them do it.”
Caller Two: “This is 1984 guys coming at us here. This is Orwellian beyond a reasonable doubt. Due process. That’s why they fought the bloody wars. Isn’t that why we’re fighting the bloody wars today? This is outrageous.”
Caller Three: “With no due process and no actual determination of guilt, innocent people fall between the cracks. It is an unconscionable travesty of justice that gives police unprecedented powers and will lead to abuses as has been evident in other jurisdictions.”
Caller Four: “It surprises me that we are willing to stand by and watch such corners being cut in our justice system. We should all remember: We could all be next if this type of procedure continues.” Under restrained questioning from host Steve Sutherland, Landry responded with the sort of vapid talking points that are becoming a hallmark of the Dexter administration.
The act is another tool for police to go over criminal assets and go after assets that are the proceeds of unlawful activity.
Well sure it’s another tool — one democratic societies have eschewed for generations. The whole interview is worth a listen:
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My question is this: What on earth has happened to Nova Scotia’s NDP? Why wasn’t this malevolent piece of legislation rescinded at the first sitting after their election? Where are Maureen MacDonald, Howard Epstein, Graham Steele? How can they sit quietly while their government tramples on the very principles that brought them into politics?
Who cares about the presumption of innocence? Citizens, yes; Dexter government, not so much
Everyone knew the NDP, once in power, would have to put some water in its red wine. In fact, Darrell Dexter began the process long before winning the 2009 election, and most voters approve the moderating effect of incumbency.
But there’s a difference between moderating extreme views and abandoning core democratic principles as the Dexter Government has done in its embrace of the Civil Forfeiture Act.
The act gives police and prosecutors a way around the presumption of innocence that has guided civilized countries for centuries. Simply put, it lets police set aside the bother of building a criminal case and proceed, Queen of Hearts-like, directly to punishment. Along the way, the hard won safeguards to protect the innocent fall by the wayside.
In Cape Breton, where police have used the act to punish entire families — poor families — because they lacked the evidence to prosecute one suspect in a household, listeners have bombarded the CBC station with messages of outrage. The Dexter government may have swallowed Stephen Harper’s tough-on-crime agenda, but Cape Bretoners still hold dear the democratic principles Canadian soldiers fought and died for in two world wars.
Ross Landry was on CBC Cape Breton’s Information Morning program a few minutes ago, reading empty talking points to defend this disgraceful abuse of power.
Consider this post a placeholder until the interview goes up on the station’s website and I can find time to dissect in in greater detail.
Barrow, MacFadden, and ‘Suitcase’ Simpson: the final chapter
Extortion.
That’s how the Liberal Party of Nova Scotia obtained the money it would be blocked from using by a government bill introduced in the legislature Tuesday. Liberal leader Stephen McNeil should think hard before crying victim.
Justice Minister Ross Landry, who introduced the bill, suggested the Liberals give the tainted funds to charity. A better idea would be to give it back to the provincial treasury, because that’s who they stole it from.
McNeil may think voters’ memories are too short to remember the details, but a few of us old coots are still around to remind them.
The money in question came from two ‘trust’ accounts, the Hawco and Howmur Funds. They came to light in the 1983 influence-peddling trial of three Nova Scotia Liberal Party fundraisers, Sen. Augustus Irvine Barrow, Clarence MacFadden, and the colorfully named James G. “Suitcase” Simpson.
The three bagmen oversaw a Liberal Party toll-gating scheme from 1970 to 1978, while Gerald Regan was premier. As the Supreme Court of Canada (R. v. Barrow, [1987] 2 S.C.R. 694) described it:
In October of 1970, the liberal party defeated the then Government of Nova Scotia in a general election and formed the new government which held power until 1978. During the period from 1970 to 1978, the Committee collected contributions amounting in total to $3,836,468.13, of which $2,770,773.52 was deposited in one bank account and $1,065,694.61 in the other. A police investigation commenced in the autumn of 1978 resulted in the seizure of many documents from government departments and agencies and also from several wineries, distilleries and other corporations. The evidence revealed that the contributions made by liquor and wine companies dealing with the government were based on a fixed amount per case of products sold to the Government. Other companies doing business with the government paid a percentage of monies they received from government work which ranged from three to five per cent.
Simpson plead guilty and paid a $75,000 fine. MacFadden and Barrow were found guilty at trial; MacFadden paid a $25,000 fine, but Barrow, for whom conviction would have meant expulsion from the Senate, appealed and won a new trial on a technicality. He was acquitted at a second trial.
At the first trial, Hugh Rynard, president of Acres Consulting Services Ltd., testified:
One of my functions was to insure that we as a company did whatever was necessary to improve our ability both in obtaining work and in execution of our work. And I was told that it would be in order for me to seek an appointment with Mr. Barrow.
Rynard and Barrow met on March 7, 1973 so Rynard could pitch the bagman on the company’s expertise. According to Rynard’s undisputed testimony, Barrow:
told me during that conversation that we would be expected to pay from three percent to five percent of the fees generated from Provincial Government work to the . . . into the coffers of the Liberal Party.
For years, the Liberal Party used interest off these secret funds to finance campaigns and, in at least one notorious example, to pay a secret salary to Liberal leader Vince MacLean.
The funds returned to the public spotlight in the early nineties, thanks to late George Hawkins, a courageous Liberal who spent years trying to convince fellow Party members to give up their ill-gotten gains, and apologize for taking them in the first place. “Since the beginning of the Regan administration,” Hawkins said, “the Liberal Party… has been living… from the proceeds of crime.”
Even before the Barrow-MacFadden trial, Hawkins knew the source of the money because, ironically, his father, a Liberal stalwart, had set up one of the funds. There is little doubt that Nova Scotia Conservatives carried out similar shakedowns during the Robert Stanfield and G.I. Smith administrations, but the party’s financial records were destroyed in a mysterious fire around the time the RCMP began making inquiries.
Thanks to pressure from Hawkins, the Liberal Party eventually agreed to audit the funds, and relinquish to the province any money that proved tainted. But as Kings College Journalism prof. Steven Kimber recounts, the party’s actions fell short of this promise:
After another year of obfuscating, the party released its so-called “audit,” which wasn’t. Instead, the auditors, “as specifically agreed,” only perused the actual trial transcript and identified $1,287,473.14 “proven or alleged to have been obtained” through kickbacks. “This procedure,” the auditors noted dryly, “does not constitute an audit.”
Liberal House Leader Manning MacDonald likes to pretend the funds were “cleansed many years ago” through this process, but this is malarkey. Most, if not all of the money that remains in the funds was stolen from the taxpayers of Nova Scotia.
Steven McNeil has a decision to make. Will he continue the long tradition of lying about the source of this money? Or will he support Bill 44, a measure that would finally put this sordid chapter of our history to rest?
