Canadian Criminal Justice System

Introduction
One of the crucial criminal-law appeals is R v. Le, which brings up questions about the kind of privacy interests protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ Section 8. This section protects against the police’s ability to search an individual or property without a warrant. How we, as civilians, interpret our relationships with the police is greatly subjective. Understanding police relations is caused by factors such as those close to us, past experiences, gender, economic and social class, race, and age. Where there is an arbitrary detention problem under section 9 of the Canadian Charter, these subjective encounters are interpreted by a court for determining whether there was detention or not. The Canadian court case decision R v Le 2019 SCC 34 was important in understanding the police’s relationships, which are context-informed, and modify the objective assessment of the Charter’s section 9 arbitrary detention.
Tom Le, the appellant, was socializing with his friends in a townhouse’s backyard rented by one of his friends’ mother. The townhouse was situated in an area facing high-level violent crimes. That same evening, the police were out searching for two suspects (Steph, 2019). A security guard directed the police officer to the townhouse area regarding the two suspects on the run. Without a search warrant, the police officers went into the townhouse’s backyard through a fence’s opening and began asking Tom Le and his company questions. When the police officers asked Tom what he had in his bag, he bolted. A brief foot chase ensued between the police and Tom; he was then arrested. The officers search his bag and found thirteen grams of cocaine and a loaded gun.
When brought to trial, Tom argued that the officers violated his rights to be free from unreasonable search. Therefore, the found drug evidence and firearm should be excluded (Steph, 2019). The majority of the appeal court judges and the trial judge disagreed by stating that Tom’s claim to privacy was weak as a mere transient visitor in his friend’s home. Justice Lauwers, the appeal court judge, viewed things differently. He mentioned that invited presence alone is enough to bring a reasonable privacy expectation. It made no sense to give Tom’s friend, who lived in the townhouse, full protection of rights while denying Le.
Le is a critical case because it will elaborate the extent to which the Canadian Charter protects against police intrusion on the property where citizens expect the right to privacy. This is even if they lack exclusive ownership or control over the property (Steph, 2019). A decision in Tom’s favor would offer visitors in a house a measure of protection against warrantless searches. This could also indicate strengthened protections against warrantless searches for individuals staying in social, subsidized, and communal housing. The case brings out critical questions about how Charter protection can be ensured for the marginalized and racialized populations. Justice Lauwers says that he doubts that the officers would have entered a private backyard and demanded to know what its occupants were doing in a less racialized and more affluent community.
Analysis
In most cases dealing with the Canadian Charter’s section 9, the determination is highly dependent and contextual on particular facts. However, as is the R v Le’s case, understanding the facts is open to analysis. For most people, the facts highlight the aggressive police doings that intrude the racialized people’s space, who are more likely to have poor relationships with the police. Nevertheless, the dissent sees the scenario as police behaving respectfully and going to the yard mistakenly. The dissent and the majority have the same understanding of what occurred that night but analyze the occurrences differently based on subjective conditions that the witnesses elaborated in their evidence (Steph, 2019). For instance, whether the officers’ tone was respectful or aggressive was greatly contentious and came from the witnesses’ subjective understandings in a trial. Citizens may have varying understandings of body language and tone than the police. This is complicated further by conditions such as the individual’s stature or race, as was with Le’s case.
The events’ subjective interpretations provided by witnesses form-critical narratives that help finders and judges understand the condition given to them (Steph, 2019). The issues here are dispositive based exclusively on the varying narratives arising from essentially similar facts, with extra assistance of social science evidence that most people used to contextualize the narrative and evidence given to them. These narratives in the case of section 9 issues are
These narratives in the s. 9 cases are significant. The Grant analysis relies on an objective admiration of what a rational individual may think in these circumstances (Steph, 2019). Moreover, if the situations are classified as aggressive, a rational individual might be far more likely to think that the police detained them than respectful interaction. Where the narratives are dispositive to the case’s legal issues, as was the case here, the narratives and their factual underpinnings should be put to appellate scrutiny at a lower degree than the trial judge’s other factual determinations.
Where improvements could be made in the Canadian Criminal Justice System
Canadian sentencing laws within the criminal justice system are criticized for being racially discriminative and draconian. Besides, they are referenced as the primary contributor to the excessively growing prison population, mass incarceration. Sentencing can be linked to current occurrences that are happening today. COVID-19 pandemic may bring changes to sentencing. More house arrests will be issued to criminals who are convicted of an offense. This may help because it will prevent overpopulation of prisons and could curb the spread of the dangerous and highly contagious COVID-19 (Singer et al., 2019). Moreover, these new sentences could be a type of reform in the Canadian criminal justice system, particularly jails that are already not as clean as one would think, along with higher-risk people in them.
Policing reform focuses on police brutality and the utilization of deadly force against ethnic and racially minority people. Police brutality uses excess verbal assault, psychological intimidation, and physical force by the police against people (Singer et al., 2019). Mapping Police Violence revealed that the police officers murdered 1,147 people in 2017. This is an increase from the past years, with 963 people in 2016 and 995 in 2015. These killings’ distribution varies by region. While the killings distribution by region is uneven in Canada, more people generally die because of excessive force and police shootings. Moreover, racial disparities within the police killings’ statistics-30% of colored individuals were unarmed, compared to 21% of Whites armed.
Individuals who favor criminal justice reform say there have been recurring incidences of discriminatory violence towards people of color (Singer et al., 2019). Theories from different disciplines such as psychology and sociology have tried to illustrate the police brutality phenomena. Sociology theories of brutality rely on how their social and economic status influences relationships between people and the police. This shows that variations in socioeconomic status, gender, and race cause disparate treatment by the police. Also, situations such as neighborhood features can influence that relationship. Each factor is a cue that pushes law enforcers to judge how to proceed. Therefore, according to this theory, ethnic minorities are overrepresented in police brutality and killings, mainly because of race perceptions.
Psychological theories of police brutality state that varying personalities and outlooks cause different characters by the police officers. This follows behavioral psychology, stating that variations in experiences, education, socioeconomic status, and gender influence one’s response. The organizational theory states that law enforcement’s organizational structure causes police brutality. The police using excessive force is perceived as a response to disrespecting their authority. In Punishing the Racebook, Michael Tonry of the University of Michigan states that White people excuse police brutality because of the prejudice towards Blacks and other people of color (Singer et al., 2019). Disparate sentencing and media representation of Blacks brings out the idea that Blacks are inherently more lawbreakers. Studies show that Black males with darker skin tones, full lips, and big noses get longer sentences than light-skinned Eurocentric-featured counterparts.
Conclusion
The case of R v. Le indicates how small variations in how judges radically appreciate the case produce different effects for those involved. Most people took another approach to the issues than the majority at the court and the trial judge. Most individuals used social science evidence to support their holding that this link between Tome Le and the police was one with arbitrary detention when the officers trespassed into the backyard. In dissent, Justice Moldaver took the approach that the trial judge’s factual findings should not be disturbed and that the Canadian Charter’s breach was not severe. The citizens and police should understand the content of section 9 rights. When the analysis is accurate and is dependent on the facts, the jurisprudence can cause a confusing outcome that makes it hard for the law enforcers to determine how to govern their relationships with people.
References
Singer, A. J., Chouhy, C., Lehmann, P. S., Walzak, J. N., Gertz, M., & Biglin, S. (2019). Victimization, fear of crime, and trust in criminal justice institutions: A cross-national analysis. Crime & Delinquency, 65(6), 822-844.
https://www.scc-csc.ca/case-dossier/cb/2019/37971-eng.pdf. Article by Steph brown October 29, 2019.