Defendant Not Bound by Informer Priviledge
The duty to protect and enforce informer privilege rests on the police, the Crown, and the courts. The latter must not disclose any information that would tend to reveal an informer’s identity. However, the defence is not bound by any such duty in undertaking its own investigation independently of the courts and the prosecution. The
Read MoreThe Offender’s Ability to Pay a Court Fine
The legislative purpose behind s. 734(2) of the Criminal Code is to prevent offenders from being fined amounts that they are truly unable to pay, and to correspondingly reduce the number of offenders who are incarcerated in default of payment. A court may impose a fine only if satisfied, on a balance of probabilities, that the offender has the
Read MoreItalian Seismologists to Stand Trial on Manslaughter Charges
September 28th, 2011 by Joseph Marcus In what has been described as a “medieval-style attack on science,” Italian prosecutors have charged six seismologists and one public official with manslaughter for their role in an earthquake that devastated the town of L’Aquila. The 6.3-magnitude earthquake took the town by surprise on April 9, 2009, resulting in over
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