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Originally Posted by trublmaker
This is about "finding conclusive evidence" in the course of a legal search in his house but then saying you can't use it cause it's on a computer not beating a confession out of the guy when you have zero evidence against him. It reminds me of one of the many Bacon brother cases out here where they found stashes of guns(hand guns, assault rifles etc.), flak jackets, drugs and cash in their house but the case was thrown out because of a technicality in the search warrent. They're caught redhanded but let go and more people got killed. Now I fully believe in everyone has their rights and charters and so on but sometimes common sense has to prevail and in this one not allowing the jury to see what a sick pr!ck this guy is was a mistake, what if the jury got it wrong because they didn't know everything? If I was a juror I'd be pissed fortunately they got it right, but what if they didn't? I still think 25 years in the electric chair works
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Requiring our law enforcement officers to themselves follow the law is not a "technicality." Sorry, it just isn't.
I don't think you're understanding the point of my post above--the point is not to compare what happened here to what has happened in past instances in Canadian judicial history. It's to point out that when we consider whether to exclude evidence because of a violation of a Charter-protected right, we don't consider whether a guy was guilty, or whether the evidence shows that he's, as you put it, "sick."
There's absolutely no doubt that Rafferty WAS a sick, disgusting and evil human being. But that is absolutely not the point. The point is always the evidence in the abstract. The judge made a discretionary call that the way this evidence came to be in the hands of the police was not lawful, and that its admission would bring the administration of justice into disrepute.
Saying that the justice system should ignore violations of the law (what you call "technicalities") is not the answer. The answer is for investigators to be more circumspect in obeying the law while they are enforcing it. In a free society, that's not that much to ask.
And I'll say again: this outcome is better. I'm not sure why you can't understand that a guilty verdict without the use of evidence that is of questionable admissibility is better than one that uses that evidence and gives the accused another argument on appeal for getting a new trial.