Two and a half years after Norman Tate’s son was killed in a car accident, he’s still struggling to come to terms with how the justice system handled the aftermath.
“If you step forward inside that place, you’re flipping a coin — whether you’re going to get justice that day or not,” he said on April 30, standing outside the Ontario Court of Justice in Brantford, Ont.
Norman Tate Junior was killed in a head-on collision a week before Christmas in 2021. The driver in the other car eventually was charged with impaired driving causing death and bodily harm. But the case crawled through the court system and was stayed after it breached the time limits for trials set in a 2016 Supreme Court decision.
That decision in R. v. Jordan established that criminal cases that go beyond those time limits — 18 months for provincial courts and 30 months for superior courts — can be stayed for unreasonable delay.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Two and a half years after Norman Tate’s son was killed in a car accident, he’s still struggling to come to terms with how the justice system handled the aftermath.
In an interview with CBC News, retired Supreme Court justice Richard Chartier said complicated cases can slow down judges as well.
In his interview with The House, Virani also cited increased federal funding for legal aid and said he expects provinces to step up — because people who can’t afford lawyers tend to slow things down.
The large number of cases that collapse due to long delays is causing people to lose faith in the justice system, said Ivanna Iwasykiw, a lawyer who represents victims of sexual assault and abuse.
Michael Spratt, a criminal defence lawyer in Ottawa, said delays might affect whether a person pleads guilty or not, regardless of their guilt or innocence.
Conditions are so bad in some jails, Spratt said, that innocent people may plead guilty to avoid spending months in pre-trial detention.
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