Jury nullification is a concept where members of a trial jury find a defendant not guilty if they do not support a government's law, do not believe it is constitutional or humane, or do not support a possible punishment for breaking the law. This may happen in both civil and criminal trials. In a criminal trial, a jury nullifies by acquitting a defendant, even though the members of the jury may believe that the defendant did commit the alleged crime. This may occur when members of the jury disagree with the law the defendant has been charged with breaking, or believe that the law should not be applied in that particular case. A jury can similarly convict a defendant on the ground of disagreement with an existing law, even if no law is broken.
Henekh "Henry" Morgentaler,, was a Jewish Polish-born Canadian physician and pro-choice advocate who fought numerous legal battles aimed at expanding abortion rights in Canada. As a youth during World War II, Morgentaler was imprisoned at the Łódź Ghetto and later at the Dachau concentration camp.
R v Morgentaler, [1988] 1 SCR 30 was a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada which held that the abortion provision in the Criminal Code was unconstitutional because it violated a woman's right under section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms ("Charter") to security of person. Since this ruling, there have been no criminal laws regulating abortion in Canada.
Bertha Wrenham Wilson was a Canadian jurist and the first female Puisne Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. Before her ascension to Canada's highest court, Wilson was also the first female associate and partner at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt and the first woman appointed to the Court of Appeal for Ontario. During her time at Osler, Wilson created the first in-firm research department in the Canadian legal industry.
Therapeutic Abortion Committees were committees established under the Canadian Criminal Code. Each committee consisted of three medical doctors who would decide whether a request for an abortion fit within the exception to the criminal offence of procuring a miscarriage, i.e. performing an abortion. The Criminal Code only permitted lawful abortion if continuation of a pregnancy would cause a woman medical harm, as certified by a TAC. The TACs were almost always composed of men, due to fewer women practicing medicine and even fewer having these types of high level positions. These restrictions on abortion were struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada in its decision in R v Morgentaler in 1988.
The Court of Appeal of Quebec is the highest judicial court in Quebec, Canada. It hears cases in Quebec City and Montreal.
Section 11 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is the section of the Canadian Constitution that protects a person's legal rights in criminal and penal matters. This includes both criminal as well as regulatory offences, as it provides rights for those accused by the state for public offences. There are nine enumerated rights protected in section 11.
The criminal law of Canada is under the exclusive legislative jurisdiction of the Parliament of Canada. The power to enact criminal law is derived from section 91(27) of the Constitution Act, 1867. Most criminal laws have been codified in the Criminal Code, as well as the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, Youth Criminal Justice Act and several other peripheral statutes.
R v Wray, [1971] S.C.R. 272 is a famous pre-Charter decision of the Supreme Court of Canada on the exclusion of improperly obtained evidence. The Court, following the English common law established in Kuruma v R, [1955] A.C. 197 (P.C.), held that judges had no discretion to exclude evidence whose admission would bring the administration of justice into disrepute.
Morgentaler v R is a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada where physician Henry Morgentaler unsuccessfully challenged the prohibition of abortion in Canada under the Criminal Code. The Court found the abortion law was appropriately passed by Parliament under the laws of federalism. This was the first of three Supreme Court decisions on abortion that were brought by Morgentaler.
R v Davidson, also known as the Menhennitt ruling, was a significant ruling delivered in the Supreme Court of Victoria on 26 May 1969. It concerned the legality of abortion in the Australian state of Victoria. The ruling was not the end of the case, but rather answered certain questions of law about the admissibility of evidence, so as to allow the trial to proceed.
Borowski v Canada (AG), [1989] 1 S.C.R. 342 is the leading Supreme Court of Canada decision on mootness of an appealed legal issue. The Court declined to decide whether the fetus had a right to life under sections 7 and 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Had they found in favour of Borowski, stricter laws against abortion in Canada would have to have been enacted. Thus, along with the later Supreme Court case Tremblay v Daigle (1989), Borowski "closed off litigation opportunities by [the] pro-life".
Duke v R [1972] S.C.R. 917 was a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada on the Canadian Bill of Rights, concerning the right of an accused to make full answer and defence to a criminal charge.
J. E. B. v. Alabama ex rel. T. B., 511 U.S. 127 (1994), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that making peremptory challenges based solely on a prospective juror's sex is unconstitutional. J.E.B. extended the court's existing precedent in Batson v. Kentucky (1986), which found race-based peremptory challenges in criminal trials unconstitutional, and Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Company (1991), which extended that principle to civil trials. As in Batson, the court found that sex-based challenges violate the Equal Protection Clause.
Penry v. Johnson, 532 U.S. 782 (2001), is a United States Supreme Court case which concerned whether instructions given to a Texas jury were constitutionally adequate to emphasize the mitigating factors in sentencing of mental retardation. The Texas courts had determined the sentencing instructions were consistent with prior Supreme Court jurisprudence, but the Court in a divided decision reversed, finding the sentencing instructions insufficient. This was the second time Penry's case made it to the Supreme Court.
Davis v. Ayala, 576 U.S. ___ (2015), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States upheld a death sentence of a Hispanic defendant despite the fact that all Blacks and Hispanics were rejected from the jury during the defendant's trial. The case involved a habeas corpus petition submitted by Hector Ayala, who was arrested and tried in the late 1980s for the alleged murder of three individuals during an attempted robbery of an automobile body shop in San Diego, California in April 1985. At trial, the prosecution used peremptory challenges to strike all Black and Hispanic jurors who were available for jury service. The trial court judge allowed the prosecution to explain the basis for the peremptory challenges outside the presence of Ayala's counsel, "so as not to disclose trial strategy". Ayala was ultimately sentenced to death, but he filed several appeals challenging the constitutionality of the trial court's decision to exclude his counsel from the hearings.
Kansas v. Carr, 577 U.S. ___ (2016), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States clarified several procedures for sentencing defendants in capital cases. Specifically, the Court held that judges are not required to affirmatively instruct juries about the burden of proof for establishing mitigating evidence, and that joint trials of capital defendants "are often preferable when the joined defendants’ criminal conduct arises out of a single chain of events". This case included the last majority opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia before his death in February 2016.
Utah v. Strieff, 579 U.S. ___, 136 S. Ct. 2056 (2016), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States limited the scope of the Fourth Amendment's exclusionary rule.
Blueford v. Arkansas, 566 U.S. 599 (2012), was a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that clarified the limits of the Double Jeopardy Clause. The Supreme Court held that the Double Jeopardy Clause does not bar retrial of counts that a jury had previously unanimously voted to acquit on, when a mistrial is declared after the jury deadlocked on a lesser included offense.
