What Is Life?: The Unanswered Question In The Supreme Court of Canada’s Levkovic Case

This blog posting is not about Erwin Schrodinger, the famous quantum physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize. Nor is it about his most famous thought-experiment, Schrodinger’s Cat, which illustrates how the quantum world works or doesn’t work, depending on whether the cat is dead or alive. Ah, “alive.” This posting is about what it means to be “alive” or, as our Criminal Code requires, “in a living state” and it just so happens Schrodinger did have something to say about life in his book entitled What Is Life?

First, let’s step back and set up the conundrum, as I see it, caused by the wording of the Criminal Code and the lack of clarification from the Supreme Court of Canada in the Levkovic case on the issue of life. Homicide under s. 222 of the Code is where a person, directly or indirectly, by any means, causes the death of a “human being.” However, it is only culpable homicide, as in murder, manslaughter or infanticide, which can form the basis of a homicide charge. Section 223 specifies when a child becomes a “human being” and therefore when a child can be the “victim” of a culpable homicide. Under that definition, a

child becomes a human being within the meaning of this Act when it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother, whether or not (a) it has breathed; (b) it has an independent circulation; or (c) the navel string is severed.

Thus a child can be a victim of a culpable homicide at the very instance of the completion of the birthing process, when the child has fully exited the mother’s womb but with the caveat that the child must be “in a living state.” This phrase denotes life and suggests the child must be alive to be thus defined as a “human being.” However, the section continues and seems to broaden the definition by making the “living state” independent of breath, circulation, and the umbilicus connection to the mother. This too makes sense in the context of the first moments of birth, when a baby duly born transitions from embryonic fluid to air. It may take a newly born baby up to ten seconds to breathe and for the blood to circulate. In those crucial moments, according to the law, the child is a human being.

But how does this interpretation impact s. 243, an offence requiring the child to be dead? The section creates an offence where the child’s death is concealed even if the child died before or during birth. Clearly if the child dies before or during birth, the child would not be a “human being” in accordance with the definition of s.223, which finds a child is a human being where the child is completely out of the womb and in a living state. Even so, in the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Levkovic, Justice Fish, speaking on behalf of the Court, refers to this section to inform the meaning of s. 243 of the Criminal Code, the section creating an offence for concealing the dead body of a child. In order to determine if a newborn child was unlawfully killed, Justice Fish opined, homicide investigators would need to determine if the child would have likely to have been born alive as opposed to a stillbirth. Indeed, Justice Fish suggested

In order to facilitate the investigation of homicides, s. 243 must therefore apply to children that were either born alive or were likely to be born alive and thus capable of satisfying the Criminal Code definition of a human being in s. 223(1). (Emphasis added)

By applying the concepts of s.243 to the definitional section 223, the Supreme Court of Canada has turned life or being “in a living state” into the likelihood of life. To base a required element of an offence on “likelihood,” and to “read down” an interpretation section, which does not require such a reading to be applicable, seems to import the “vagueness,” which the SCC abhors. Instead of taking an opportunity to clarify the meaning of life in the context of death, the SCC choose to apply the catch-all likelihood test as found in the Mabior case and the Whatcott decision (see my previous blog for further discussion). What the Court fails to understand is that being alive is much different than being likely alive.

How does this connect to Schrodinger? Erwin Schrodinger’s 1944 What Is Life? book, based on a series of lectures, is part scientific, part philosophical treatise in which he applies quantum principles to biology in a search for an explanation of life. Many believe his book to be a precursor to the discovery of DNA. Life, in the Schrodinger world, is quantifiable and real as exemplified by genetic “code-script.” Although Schrodinger the quantum physicist would approve, Schrodinger the bio-theorist certainly would not.

The Result In Canada (Attorney General) v. Bedford

The much awaited decision from the Court of Appeal for Ontario in the Bedford case on the constitutionality of various prostitution related sections of the Criminal Code has finally been released.

The majority of the court agreed with Justice Himel's lower court decision that s. 210 common bawdy house and s. 212(1)(j) living off the avails of prostitution are unconstitutional as being contrary to the principles of fundamental justice under s. 7 of the Charter.

In the matter of keeping a common bawdy house, the Court struck down the section but suspended the invalidity of the section for 12 months to give Parliament an opportunity to redraft the section in a Charter friendly manner.

The offence of living off the avails of prostitution under s. 212(1)(j) is unconstitutional in the limited circumstances of where the relationship between the prostitute and those living off the avails is not exploitive. For example, where a prostitute supports his or her family with the earnings of prostitution, the family would not be exploiting the prostitute and should not be charged under this section. This exemption would not preclude "pimps," who put prostitutes on the streets for their own economic benefit would still be subject to this subsection. 

Where the court did not agree with Justice Himel was on the issue of the constitutionality of s.213 communication for the purpose of prostitution. The court upheld this section on the basis of a previous decision from the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) on the same issue. In that previous 1990 case, Reference re ss. 193 and 195.1(1) (c) of the Criminal Code, the Government of Manitoba referred the then new and untested communication sections to the SCC to determine if the sections would withstand a possible Charter challenge. For further discussion of references to the SCC, please read my previous posting here. The SCC found section 195.1(1)(c), the same section at issue in Bedford but numbered as s. 213(1)(c), to be contrary to fundamental freedom of expression under s. 2(b) of the Charter but saved under s. 1 of the Charter as a reasonable limit in a free and democratic society. I have discussed s.1 in relation to freedom of expression in some previous postings and most particularly here and here.

The decision is of interest in terms of the findings of the Court on the s.7 issue. However, the decision also makes some important comments on the principle of precedent and the restrictions on a Court when revisiting a decision, which has already been a subject of consideration by a higher level Court. This fascinating discussion, which I suggest impacted the decision in Bedford and provides guidelines for future cases, will be the subject of my next post. 

Don't Pre-Judge! Jury Vetting and the Supreme Court of Canada

Next Wednesday and Thursday, the Supreme Court of Canada will be hearing the appeals of Tung Chi Duong, Vinicio Cardoso, and Ibrahim Yumnu, which raise the issue of jury vetting: a process where the prosecution does a pre-court check of potential jurors. The three Ontario co-accused were convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder involving a contract killing. The Crown’s office, upon receipt of the jury panel lists containing the names of potential jurors, requested police enforcement authorities to do criminal record checks of the listed individuals and to make any comments “concerning any disreputable persons we would not want as a juror.” The Crown did not disclose the information received through this pre-vetting process to the defence, although there was some evidence trial counsel was aware of this practice. The information was used by the trial Crown in selecting the jury for the trial.

In terms of the legislative authority to perform such a check, neither the Criminal Code rules relating to the jury selection process in court nor the pre-trial rules found in the provincial Juries Act, as enacted at the time of the trial, permitted the procedure. It should be noted that the Ontario Juries Act has since been amended, under s.18.2, to provide a procedure for police to pre-check a potential juror for the presence or absence of a criminal record. Such a check is required under s. 4(b) to determine if a potential juror is ineligible to serve as a juror due to a prior conviction for “an offence that may be prosecuted on indictment.” The phrase “may be prosecuted on indictment” refers to the mode of trying the accused’s case in the criminal courts.  An indictable offence is considered to be a more serious crime and carries a higher penalty than a less serious summary conviction offence. Certain indictable offences give the accused the right to have the trial in the Superior Court as opposed to Provincial Court. Some indictable offences, such as murder, also give the accused the right to a jury trial.

Generally, pre-vetting of jurors is not an acceptable practice in Canada. Such a pre-trial process is contrary to the fundamental principles of justice, which require the offender to be tried before an independent and impartial jury. Since the advent of the Charter, this fundamental principle has been constitutionally protected under s. 11 (d) and is inexorably bound up with another core criminal law principle: the presumption of innocence. I have written at length on the historical significance of the presumption in earlier postings. More generally, this procedural right to a fair trial is also protected under section 7 of the Charter as the principle lies at the very heart of the administration of justice.

The issue is one of impartiality under the Charter. Section 11(d) protects an offender’s right to a fair trial before an independent and impartial jury. Permitting pre-vetting of jurors has the potential effect of selecting biased juries, which are neither independent nor impartial, but based on selected criterion. The resultant effect is a pre-packaged or pre-determined jury, which would therefore favour the party using the pre-selection process. In other words such a jury would “pre-judge” the issues.

Even the potential for bias is contrary to our concept of trial fairness. As discussed by Justice Cory in the Bain case, apprehension of jury bias is to be avoided as the mere appearance of impartiality would be contrary to Charter principles. Although the concept holds the administration of justice to a high standard of impartiality, the apprehension of bias must be reasonably held. Thus, the question to be determined on the issue of bias is as follows: would reasonable and right-minded persons find there a reasonable apprehension of bias in the circumstances.

This question brings us back to the Duong, Cardoso, and Yumnu case. On appeal to the Court of Appeal for Ontario, appellate counsel did not refer to the arguments as outlined above but focused instead upon the Crown’s lack of disclosure of the vetting process. In the appellant’s view, this lack or delay of disclosure compromised the defence’s ability to make full answer and defence under s. 7 of the Charter. This position was easily dismissed by Justice Watt, speaking on behalf of the Court, as there was no evidence of any actual or perceived unfairness of the selection of the jury based on this non-disclosure. Unfortunately it appears the defence will be making the same arguments before the Supreme Court of Canada as revealed by a perusal of the appellant Yumnu’s factum.

However, a large number of Intervenors have filed material and will be making submissions on the issue such as the Criminal Lawyers’ Association, the Ontario Crown Attorneys’ Association, David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights, Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association. It remains to be seen what arguments will be finally presented on this issue and it will be of great interest to see how the Supreme Court of Canada ultimately deals with the issue of pre-vetting a jury.

In the next posting, I will continue the discussion through the international perspective on the efficacy and issues surrounding jury vetting.

Reading The Riot Act

Riots or violent disturbances of the peace are part of the human psyche. As early as 44 B.C., when the Roman mobs attacked the houses of Brutus and Cassius in an angry response to the untimely death of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March, the world has since experienced riots in every era. Riots occur for a multitude of reasons: from student protest as in the 1229 University of Paris students’ strike to revolution as in the Boston Tea Party of 1773 and from the various race riots in the United States throughout the 1900’s to the obscure reason of advant-garde music, when in 1913 the audience in the Paris Théâtre des Champs-Élysées listening to the debut of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring ballet broke out in a violent booing frenzy. There have been riots over various alcoholic beverages as in the London Gin Riots of 1743 or the Beer Riots in Bavaria in 1844 or then only ten years later, the Portland Rum Riot. Sadly, I missed the Champagne Riot in 1911 France. However, increasingly, riots are not about protest but about a lack of sportsmanship or too much sportsmanship as in the case of the recent hockey related riots in Canada.

The Stanley Cup Riots, and I use the plural as there has been more than one (two in Vancouver, five in Montreal, one in Edmonton during playoffs), have been particularly egregious, costing the municipalities millions of dollars in damaged property and even millions more in prosecuting and punishing the participants. The Nika Riot of AD 532 might have been the first sports related riot, happening in the Hippodrome at Constantinople, then the centre of the remaining Roman Empire in the East. The two factions, Blue and Green, were supporting their chosen chariot race teams when both sides demanded the city release Blue and Green prisoners, who had been arrested, earlier, for disturbing the peace. In a moment, this sporting event became political and over the next few days a not unfamiliar scene played out as the Emperor Justinian first apologized and, when the mob was still not pacified, then slaughtered thirty thousand Blue and Greens in the Hippodrome. Ironically, it was Justinian who codified all Imperial laws into the Codex. See my previous posting on the codification of our criminal laws into the Criminal Code.

Although we no longer “read the riot act,” as they no doubt did in 18^th Century England when the Riot Act was first enacted, our criminal law does prohibit “unlawful assemblies and riots” under the Criminal Code. The 1715 Riot Act gave a Justice of the Peace or another person so authorized to disperse “groups of twelve people or more being unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously assembled together, to the disturbance of the publick peace” upon proclaiming:

Our sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George, for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies. God save the King.

If the crowd did not disperse within an hour of this proclamation, the authorities had the right to “seize and apprehend” the rabble-rousers who would be subject to the death penalty.

Although the Riot Act was finally repealed in 1973, the Canadian offences of unlawful assembly and riot, under sections 63 and 64 of the Criminal Code respectively, are a distant reminder of the original crime. Instead of twelve people “unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously” assembled, the Canadian counterpart, unlawful assembly under s. 63, requires three or more persons “with intent to carry out any common purpose” who:

cause persons in the neighbourhood of the assembly to fear, on reasonable grounds, that they

(a) will disturb the peace tumultuously; or

(b) will by that assembly needlessly and without reasonable cause provoke other persons to disturb the peace tumultuously.

Similarly, section 64, defines the offence of riot as an unlawful assembly, presumably as per s.63, “that has begun to disturb the peace tumultuously.” Therefore, an unlawful assembly is about to become a riot, although not quite there, while a riot is exactly that: a full-blown tumultuous affair.

The defining term for these offences, in both the Criminal Code offence and the 1715 original crime, is the word “tumultuously.” To understand the meaning of this word, which is not defined in the Criminal Code, case law is needed. In the Berntt case, arising from the first Vancouver Stanley Cup Riot in 1994, at issue was the clarity of the meaning of the word “tumultuously” as found in s.64.

Defence argued the term was vague and therefore did not provide a clear understanding of the essential requirements of the crime. Without such clarity, defence argued, the accused’s ability to make full answer and defence was compromised. To try an individual on the basis of a vague law and, therefore, to potentially deprive the individual of his or her liberty if convicted would be contrary to the principles of fundamental justice under s.7 of the Charter.

The British Columbia Court of Appeal, in deciding the issue, referred to the 1992 Supreme Court of Canada decision in R. v. Nova Scotia Pharmaceutical Society and Justice Gonthier’s comments on the importance of limits, provided by clear language, which delineate our laws and permit legal debate. However, language provides boundaries only and are mere guidelines as stated by Justice Gonthier in the following passage:

Semantic arguments, based on a perception of language as an unequivocal medium, are unrealistic.  Language is not the exact tool some may think it is.  It cannot be argued that an enactment can and must provide enough guidance to predict the legal consequences of any given course of conduct in advance.  All it can do is enunciate some boundaries, which create an area of risk.  But it is inherent to our legal system that some conduct will fall along the boundaries of the area of risk; no definite prediction can then be made.  Guidance, not direction, of conduct is a more realistic objective. 

With guidelines comes context and in the end, the court found the word “tumultuously” must be read in conjunction with the other words used in the offence such as “riot” and “unlawful assembly,” which connotes a violent disturbance as opposed to an uproarious, perhaps even jubilant, crowd. History also imbued the term with particular meaning as the crimes, through their very definition, related back to old England and the Riot Act.

Thus, as they say, what goes around comes around and what was once a crime is still a crime. Interestingly, the discussion of boundaries and limits is exactly what the crimes of unlawful assembly and riot are all about: it is the lack of boundaries and limits that marks the behaviour as crimes as opposed to a Canada Day event on Parliament Hill where the crowd gathers in celebration and bon ami.

Sadly, as a coda to this posting, Ryan Berntt, the accused in question, was shot in the head by a police officer’s rubber bullet during the riot and sustained brain damage. In the end, it is individuals, both in the crowd and out of the crowd, who suffer the most. It is the individuals, not the crowd, who stand charged or must face the inevitable morning-after clean up. Perhaps this sobering reality is worth remembering. 

The Criminal Code of Canada: Codification and Reform

Whenever we read of a sensational arrest in the paper or we follow the latest celebrity trial, we are invoking the criminal law. Most of us, lawyers and lay people included, know the criminal law is found generally in the Criminal Code (drug offences are also federally created but are found in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and not in the Criminal Code). Lawyers are taught in first year Constitutional Law why the criminal law is created by Parliament: due to the Division of Powers between Provincial Legislatures and Parliament as found in the Constitution Act, 1867, which gives the Federal government exclusive authority to create criminal law.  But many of us do not know why this power resulted in a codified criminal law as opposed to the hodge-podge of criminal statutes as found in the United Kingdom.

Although the first Criminal Code was not adopted until 1892, it was conceived much earlier by our first Prime Minister, John A. MacDonald, who envisioned a codified criminal law as an important element of Confederation. Codification seemed to be on the mother country’s mind as well in 1878 as a codification of British criminal law, Bill 178, written by Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, received Second Reading in the House of Commons but died on the order paper. So too, other Commonwealth nations, such as India, Jamaica, Australia, and New Zealand, flirted with, or in some cases enacted, codified criminal laws.

Even a subsequent Royal Commission could not resuscitate the UK version of the Code. Canada, not being near as critical of the draft English Code, imported many aspects of the draft into the first Criminal Code in 1892. The rest, as they say is history as the Code has maintained its status since, albeit with amendments and renumbering along the way.

Let’s trace the crime of theft as an example. Prior to the enactment of the Criminal Code in 1892, theft was defined through British statute and common law. Indeed, the first consolidation of crimes, which occurred in 1869, included the crime of larceny: the old common law offence of theft. Presently, theft is particularized in our Criminal Code under s.322 as follows:

Every one commits theft who fraudulently and without colour of right takes, or fraudulently and without colour of right converts to his use or to the use of another person, anything, whether animate or inanimate, with intent 

(a) to deprive, temporarily or absolutely, the owner of it, or a person who has a special property or interest in it, of the thing or of his property or interest in it;

(b) to pledge it or deposit it as security;

(c) to part with it under a condition with respect to its return that the person who parts with it may be unable to perform; or 

(d) to deal with it in such a manner that it cannot be restored in the condition in which it was at the time it was taken or converted.

Historically, there were numerous statutes in England, which pertained to specific forms of theft such as embezzlement, animal theft, shoplifting, pickpocketing, housebreaking, and the like. Presently in England, although a general definition of theft can be found in the Theft Act, 1968, one would have to also look at other statutes for the specific form of theft involved. For example, the basic definition of theft in the Theft Act, 1968 states:

A person is guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it; and “thief” and “steal” shall be construed accordingly.

However, one would have to look at the Theft (Amendment) Act, 1996 for the crime of “dishonestly retaining wrongful credit.” The Canadian equivalent, of course, is theft and can be easily found under s.322.

Over the years there have been calls to reform the Code to simplify many of the complex and convoluted sections but to no avail: today’s Criminal Code reads much the same as it has for the past fifty years. Much of the difficulty stems from the amendments to the Code, which adds onto existing sections an ever-increasing number of subsections instead of making new sections by re-numbering and re-structuring the Code. For more on this, read my previous blog on lists where I outline the 33 sections found between the search warrant section under s. 487 and the execution of the search warrant found at s.488.  

Clearly, there is still work to do. In 2012, when the Code celebrates its 120^th anniversary, the Federal government should take up the call to reform in order to provide Canadians with a cogent and relevant Criminal Code, which will promote the principles of justice and be a model for developing democracies.