DiManno: Judge put justice at risk in Tori Stafford trial
I have seen stupid juries, none more so than the panel that acquitted a young mother of murdering her baby, even though she led police to where the body was hidden beneath a boulder, information the woman said had come to her “in a dream.” It was a verdict based on pity for the traumatized accused.
But I have also seen stupid judges who put justice at risk because they cleave to a standard of evidentiary admissibility that defies logic, precedent and the sacred duty of jurors to fairly, intelligently, weigh the merits of a case at trial. The difference between a judge and a juror is that one assumes a superiority of perception and sagacity while the other, unschooled in the finer distinctions of jurisprudence, can bring only common sense and native intelligence to the task at hand.
That juries so often get it right is a credit to their capacity for cutting through the obscurity and obstruction that too often emanates from the bench in Canadian courtrooms. The Michael Rafferty jury did that Friday night with apparently remarkable ease and palpably assured composure, bringing guilty verdicts on first-degree murder, kidnapping and sexual assault causing bodily harm in the slaying of 8-year-old Tori Stafford.
If now, released from their sequestering — and they deliberated for just over one full day, all it took to consider evidence presented through 10 weeks of trial — they feel ill-served, perplexed or resentful upon discovering the vast trove of significant details that had been withheld by Justice Thomas Heeney’s rulings, who can blame them? Equally, how is the public to be convinced that the Canadian justice system is sound at its core, both vigorously respectful of the Charter rights of a defendant and mindful of the justness due to victims?
http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1177722--dimanno-judge-put-justice-at-risk-in-tori-stafford-trial?bn=1
Reporters with a cute butt are probably missed at the "Sun".
