Hart, McLeod, Dube, Foote, Formenton charged with sexual assault

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by GFG#1

Almost seems like a moot point now that there is no Jury. It made sense when the Jury wouldn't be in the room to know about the evidence. I also know it is the Judges job to be impartial and only consider the evidence that is allowed in the trial when making her final verdict.

With that said, how would anyone that knows about those text messages be able to just "ignore it" when trying to make a decision. The fact that it wasn't sent under oath, doesn't make it not true. Why would anyone send that text message to anyone without at least some validity to it, especially when you are under investigation by Hockey Canada at the time.

Then taking into account that all these witnesses conveniently don't seem to remember details of that evening. Saying I have been trying to forget that night etc. It's a big stretch to think that you wouldn't remember what happened that evening unless a gang bang was a normal part of your everyday life, and B, what happened that evening could have ended your amateur/professional hockey career that up until that point you had been working towards your entire life.

you get shown a text message you sent at the time and still don't remember.

Then the Judge is supposed to look at all of that and just ignore the text message.

I know there are lots of things that have happened in my past that I don't remember, but then someone says remember that time we did this, and you go OMG yes that was a great night etc. Memories start coming back to you.

So again, how you could read your past statements previous text messages and still have no recollection of the evening seems about as farfetched as the text not being semi accurate.

It makes me wonder if it was the plan all along assuming there was going to be a jury and why the Crown was the most against dismissing the jury as their case was built on having one.

One of the defense lawyers objections to the text message being entered into evidence now is that the prosecution had a chance to do that before the trial and didn't, and that they would have handled other cross-examinations differently had they known ahead of time like they should have. Is it possible that the prosecution knew there was a good chance that they would be inadmissible so rather risk asking for permission and getting turned down, they thought it would be better to just throw them out there during the trial and deal with it then? Because like you said, a jury can't unhear something no matter how much they are instructed to not consider it as evidence.

The YouTube channel Legal Eagle did a Q&A video a while ago and one of the questions was how can you expect a jury just to forget what they heard. His answer was that they don't and they know everything and anything can influence a jury. You have to do your best get them to not consider it, but they are keenly aware that it's a hard thing to do.

[Makarov]

Originally Posted by IamNotKenKing

Agreed. Trial days are exhausting. Then there’s further prep. immediately after as well.

Debriefing with client... debriefing with witnesses... preparing for tomorrow's witnesses or arguments etc, having brief emotional breakdown over perceived mistakes you made today... oh yeah, also answering at least the urgent portion of the 100 emails that you received while you were in trial/hearing.

[MBates]

Originally Posted by FlamesFaninTO

Check the actual evidence. What is alleged is a single solitary "spank" on her bare buttocks.
...

When you have not one but two videos of her very soberly saying she consented to and extremely consistent testimony from you very one in the room that she was asking for them to f her and to give them head the idea that a single smack on the butt is assault is ridiculous.
...

...Did they have poor judgment in even entertaining what she was asking for. Sure they did. Is it criminal sexual assault. No way no how.

Slapping someone on the bare buttocks without their consent in circumstances where they are engaged in sexual contact with others is absolutely capable of leading to a conviction for sexual assault according to Canadian law.

That is true before even taking into account that the actual evidence includes the complainant's testimony that she never asked to be spanked or consented to such contact, that it was hard enough to cause unwanted pain, and it made her expressly ask it to be stopped.

I am one of the first to be willing to debate the merits of what the law currently is versus what it ought to be, and whether we should be criminalizing as much conduct as we currently are, but with respect, how you have articulated yourself in your post is entirely consistent with people who currently get charged and convicted of sexual assault on a fairly regular basis, and many would say is why we do criminalize as much conduct as we do.

Even if it is true that the complainant asked everyone in the room to have sex with her, can you explain how you think that automatically means she was asking / consenting to be physically slapped (on any part of her body for that matter)?

And if you doubt my take on the law, you can review a recent Supreme Court of Canada decision upholding a trial judge's assessment that it made no sense for an accused to claim that a complainant had "out of the blue" asked to be spanked:

Although clearly there was no evidence about what activities the complainant would have willingly engaged in after sexual foreplay, the complainant specifically testified that she had not agreed to being spanked and had not asked the accused for rough sex. This evidence formed the backdrop for the credibility findings at paras. 117-58 of the trial judge’s reasons and for her ultimate decision to reject the accused’s account as contrived.

https://decisions.scc-csc.ca/scc-csc...20315/index.do

[Makarov]

I'm not trying to throw shade at anyone in particular, but I am often struck by how confident some non-lawyers are in the correctness of their legal opinions when they post in places like this thread.

Its almost like people think that lawyers are all just role-playing or something.

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by Strange Brew

My point exactly. Law firms bill for all kinds of work, not just when a particular lawyer is on the phone or sending an email. More and more we are seeing firms move away from hourly pricing to alternative pricing models as AI makes certain tasks so much more efficient.

Everyone wants to point to examples where AI or chatGPT gave the wrong answer to a question. If you're only seeing the mistakes, IMO you're really missing the big picture.

edit: Sorry going way off topic in an important and sensitive thread.

Mistakes get you sued for malpractice. And they really can't replace hands on legal research yet. Even if AI gets you a case that's relevant, is it the best case? The most fitting your facts? The pithiest? Is it an outlier?

AI is OK for marketing. It can spit out an article on a recent case OK. But it's obviously generic and doesn't provide any insight.

[taxbuster]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

Mistakes get you sued for malpractice. And they really can't replace hands on legal research yet. Even if AI gets you a case that's relevant, is it the best case? The most fitting your facts? The pithiest? Is it an outlier?

AI is OK for marketing. It can spit out an article on a recent case OK. But it's obviously generic and doesn't provide any insight.

Equally true in tax! There are the "facts basis" which then give rise to interpretation within the confines of the Income Tax Act. Judging, when making an argument as to which case has the best scope from a set of cases heard and adjudicated? Mmmm....that takes practice, experience, the ability to distinguish one fact pattern from another and one interpretation by any given court from another's view.


This is non-trivial law (as opposed to that practised on TV in whichever country) at its finest...and it takes a MIND to make the evaluation, not an "intelligence".


No difference here, or, I suspect in any aspect of criminal or litigation law.

[Coach]

To the AI point, I recently met a very high-level lawyer and discussed this directly with them. I assumed, as I think many would, that AI would be great for lawyers for searching previous cases for precedent, but what they find is that if AI doesn't have an answer it just makes one up. And if it does that even once it's a huge problem, because now you'd have people citing law that doesn't actually exist.

So, because of that, they are actually extremely careful and take preventative steps to make sure absolutely zero AI is being used in their work, even for summaries etc..

[Titan2]

Originally Posted by IliketoPuck

The main thing that changed between then and now is that then it was primarily an investigation that led to a settlement for $ that didn't really impact his teammates livelihood or lifestyle. Which, at the end of the investigation, led Hockey Canada to conclude that the best course of action was to pay almost $4MM to E.M.. Clearly there was enough in the investigation to warrant that conclusion.

Now with freedom of teammates as the table stakes the story has conveniently changed in their favor.

I did not hear that the settlement was that high. That is a lot of money.

Since we baselessly speculate nonstop here, why would someone put themsekves through nine days of testimony and cross-examination by arguably some of the best defence lawyers in the country and then lie about it?

This makes absolutely no sense to me. She could say nothing, refuse to testify, and it all goes away. Instead, she volunteers to go into extraordinary detail about a night that, at the very least, was embarrassing and difficult for her.

It makes no sense at all. This will likely not play into the assessment of her credibility legally, but it sure makes me think she is being as truthful as her memory will allow.

[Titan2]

Originally Posted by Coach

To the AI point, I recently met a very high-level lawyer and discussed this directly with them. I assumed, as I think many would, that AI would be great for lawyers for searching previous cases for precedent, but what they find is that if AI doesn't have an answer it just makes one up. And if it does that even once it's a huge problem, because now you'd have people citing law that doesn't actually exist.

So, because of that, they are actually extremely careful and take preventative steps to make sure absolutely zero AI is being used in their work, even for summaries etc..

There were a couple of US cases of lawyers making submissions drafted by AI. Needless to say there were phantom cases. She is in trouble.

I have used AI for other things, though. For example, I asked it to make a checklist of a portion of a National Instrument (securities law). It did a great job. I then asked it to compare the checklist to a disclosure document. It did really well, but only about 85%. I did, and always planned, to go through it line by line and did find areas that it was not fully correct. However, all of the time, it saved me converting the text into a table, adding the proper sub-rule numbers, and adding a short section summary, which was immensely valuable.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by Makarov

Debriefing with client... debriefing with witnesses... preparing for tomorrow's witnesses or arguments etc, having brief emotional breakdown over perceived mistakes you made today... oh yeah, also answering at least the urgent portion of the 100 emails that you received while you were in trial/hearing.

Standing and talking for an entire day is exhausting too.

[Scroopy Noopers]

Originally Posted by Coach

To the AI point, I recently met a very high-level lawyer and discussed this directly with them. I assumed, as I think many would, that AI would be great for lawyers for searching previous cases for precedent, but what they find is that if AI doesn't have an answer it just makes one up. And if it does that even once it's a huge problem, because now you'd have people citing law that doesn't actually exist.

So, because of that, they are actually extremely careful and take preventative steps to make sure absolutely zero AI is being used in their work, even for summaries etc..

There context stuff in certain fields where words mean different things. It can cause problems. My boss used AI to review a report and it suggested we change all “firewall” references to “security system”…. Well. It was a report on an architectural firewall.

[Makarov]

Originally Posted by blankall

Standing and talking for an entire day is exhausting too.

100%. Just the stress is exhausting (plus, if you're like me, you don't sleep well before the first day of a trial or big hearing).

[troutman]

Originally Posted by blankall

Standing and talking for an entire day is exhausting too.

Not for my sister!

[Kipper_3434]

If it was just about the slaps being consensual, why even bring up all the consensual stuff? The goal posts seem to have been moved if only the slaps were to be looked at as illegal.

[Aarongavey]

Originally Posted by Kipper_3434

If it was just about the slaps being consensual, why even bring up all the consensual stuff? The goal posts seem to have been moved if only the slaps were to be looked at as illegal.

Is there any evidence that the sexual activity was consensual outside of the first interaction with McLeod? To the best of my knowledge there is none. The players put a sheet on the floor and told her to masturbate. Then they beat her and had sexual congress with her which she did not say yes to. That is the evidence as I have heard it.

[Strange Brew]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

Mistakes get you sued for malpractice. And they really can't replace hands on legal research yet. Even if AI gets you a case that's relevant, is it the best case? The most fitting your facts? The pithiest? Is it an outlier?

AI is OK for marketing. It can spit out an article on a recent case OK. But it's obviously generic and doesn't provide any insight.

You are way oversimplifying what AI can do and the process by which it is used. Large law firms are leveraging this technology today and not for marketing.

Obviously generic and doesn’t provide insight? Curious what your exposure to AI is. Chatgpt on the internet or have you seen what dynamic AI and agents can do?

People want to oversimplify and assume AI means no human involvement when in fact it is a massive tool for efficiency. Contract and tax law are two of the most obvious applications where it is being used today and the models get more advanced by the month.

Someone earlier on here said that the only way a lawyer can make money is through charging their time, which prompted this discussion in the first place. The billable task in a large law firm that can be expedited through AI are abundant. Doesn’t mean all lawyers, or knowledge workers for that matter, get replaced by AI agents.

[Itse]

The A.I. thread is on the off-topic forum.

[Scroopy Noopers]

Originally Posted by Itse

The A.I. thread is on the off-topic forum.

So is the gear grinder thread. Don’t be annoying.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by Scroopy Noopers

So is the gear grinder thread. Don’t be annoying.

LOL. Don't be a moron and pretend you don't know how forums work.

Don't flood an active thread with a completely irrelevant topic. That defeats the point of having different threads for different discussions.

That's annoying.

[Hackey]

Originally Posted by MBates

Slapping someone on the bare buttocks without their consent in circumstances where they are engaged in sexual contact with others is absolutely capable of leading to a conviction for sexual assault according to Canadian law.

That is true before even taking into account that the actual evidence includes the complainant's testimony that she never asked to be spanked or consented to such contact, that it was hard enough to cause unwanted pain, and it made her expressly ask it to be stopped.

I am one of the first to be willing to debate the merits of what the law currently is versus what it ought to be, and whether we should be criminalizing as much conduct as we currently are, but with respect, how you have articulated yourself in your post is entirely consistent with people who currently get charged and convicted of sexual assault on a fairly regular basis, and many would say is why we do criminalize as much conduct as we do.

Even if it is true that the complainant asked everyone in the room to have sex with her, can you explain how you think that automatically means she was asking / consenting to be physically slapped (on any part of her body for that matter)?

And if you doubt my take on the law, you can review a recent Supreme Court of Canada decision upholding a trial judge's assessment that it made no sense for an accused to claim that a complainant had "out of the blue" asked to be spanked:



https://decisions.scc-csc.ca/scc-csc...20315/index.do

If it was a single smack that seems like a strange sticking point. If it was continued after she said no then that makes more sense. Most people don't ask permission for every single thing they're going to do during sex. A butt slap isn't out of the ordinary for sex. Obviously depending on how it was actually done. But if you thought everything was fine and consensual doesn't seem like a huge leap. If you thought she didn't want to be involved then everything is an issue.