Daily Archives: 2/1/2007
Arar Fallout
| 2/1/2007 | Posted by Patti under Canadian News, Canadian Politics |
The Toronto Star is reporting that some politicians are receiving fallout from the public over the settlement with Mahar Arar last week. I’m afraid I have issue with those who have issue about this settlement. This man suffered a gross injustice, in part, by the government of Canada through members of our national police force, the RCMP.Â
So, the Cop Interviewing Pickton Lied?
| 2/1/2007 | Posted by Patti under Pickton Murder Trial |
It appears the last day or so of the Pickton trial has had a lot of focus on whether the cops who interviewed him during those eleven hours that the jury watched last week lied to the suspect. Actually, if they were lies, misstatements, exaggerations, implicaton or misleading seems to be under examination by the defense.
I must be missing something here. I’ve never heard where a court has thrown a case out because a police interrogator has applied pressure to attempt ot extract the truth from a suspect. Planting and/or fabricating evidence can get that but telling a suspect that your mother died of cancer to create commonality isn’t going to get tossed. So, what’s the defense’s point?
If the police had behaved improperly during the taped interviews, the court would have not ruled the evidence admissable. The court did admit the evidence, so the procedure is not in question.
The purpose of the interviews and this trial is to determine if his client has lied, murdered, raped, mutilated or whatever. Actually it is trying to determine if he’s murdered the six women he’s charged with doing so. With the shear volume of murder charges this guy is facing, charges for the other indecent acts seem trivial.
In the course of the investigation there was reportedly over 400,000 DNA swabs taken from the Pickton farm which was literally excavated in an effort to be thorough in finding all of the victims and evidence of how they met their deaths.
It makes me wonder if the same amount of resources were expended in an effort to reach out to the people who frequent the Lower Eastside and help them up into the mainstream of society would the killer, be it Pickton or another, even found a hunting ground?
Coulda, shoulda, woulda… it will kill ya man.
Sextuplets Seizure Clairified
| 2/1/2007 | Posted by Patti under General |
The brief report on CTV News last night was not completely up to date. The British Columbia government had seized three of the remaining four sextuplets over the past weekend and then yesterday abruptly returned them to the parents. The children had been seized without a court hearing which the Supreme Court of Canada ten years ago had ruled the parents had the right to.
Truscott Appeal Hits the Airwaves
| 2/1/2007 | Posted by Patti under Canadian News |
In 1959 Steven Truscott made history in Canada by being the youngest person ever to be sentenced to be hanged at the age of 14. Yesterday he arrived at the Ontario Court of Appeal seeking to get that conviction overturned and became the first case in Ontario to be televised. Truscott was convicted in 1959 in the rape and murder of Lynne Harper. That sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment and he was released on parole 10 years later.
I grew up hearing discussions of the Truscott case. I don’t believe I ever heard anyone who considered him to have been guilty of the crime he was accused of. It was those overheard and sometimes participated in discussions which led to the formation of my own opinions on capital punishment. I believe that there are cases which cry out for capital punishment, Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka come to mind immediately. Those cases where there lies no room for doubt, no room for appeal.
The Truscott case from the beginning had a football field or more of room for doubt. We’re seeing now, almost 50 years later, surviving witnesses recanting their stories. Advances in forensic sciences casting doubt on other evidence and conclusions drawn at the time. It seems as though the only ones who need to see the light, are those who have the power to throw out the conviction and give Truscott the exoneration he’s sought for so long.
In many ways it’s good that Truscott’s appeal before the Ontario Court of Appeal is the first to be televised in Ontario. It is long overdue that the light be brought to this case. It is going to be interesting to see unfold.
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