Last Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada released its decision in R. v. Nasogaluak, which dealt with the availability of sentence reductions for offenders who have been abused by police. The case involved an Edmonton man whose ribs were broken by police after he led them on a high speed chase, treatment which the Court found to be an excessive use of force. The Court’s decision affirmed that judges can hand out reduced sentences where the state has violated the rights of an accused, even if the abuse was not so excessive that it amounted to a Charter violation. While the Court held that mandatory minimum sentences set out in the Criminal Code should generally apply, in exceptional cases a sentence reduction below a mandatory minimum may be necessary to remedy particularly egregious misconduct by state agents. As Justice Louis LeBel wrote, “a sentence cannot be ‘fit’ if it does not respect the fundamental values enshrined in the Charter,” regardless of whether or not it is legislated by Parliament.
CCLA has long-opposed the use of mandatory minimum sentences in Canada’s criminal justice system, primarily because they strip judges of the discretion necessary to craft appropriate sentences on a case-by-case basis. Though the Nasogaluak ruling reinforces the broad applicability of mandatory minimum sentences, CCLA is heartened by the Court’s decision that such punishment can be diverged from where necessary to redress egregious state misconduct. In reaching this conclusion, the Supreme Court’s decision accepts many of the arguments that CCLA made in its intervention in this case. To access a copy of CCLA’s factum click here.
