Background
Nicole Doucet Ryan (now Nicole Doucet) alleged that she was subject to repeated abuse and torment by her husband, Michael Ryan. At trial, the trial judge accepted she was subject to such abuse. The husband was never called to testify. In September 2007, Ms. Doucet began to think about having her husband murdered. Over the course of the next seven months, she spoke to at least three men whom she hoped would kill him. In December 2007 or January 2008, she paid one man $25,000 to carry out the killing, but he then refused, demanding more compensation. She approached another person and was contacted by a third, an undercover RCMP officer, posing as a “hit man”. On March 27, 2008, she met with this individual and agreed to pay him to kill her husband. The agreed upon price was $25,000, with $2,000 paid in cash that day. The killing was to take place the coming weekend. Later that same night, she provided an address and a picture of her husband to the “hit man.” Shortly after, she was arrested and charged with counselling the commission of an offence not committed contrary to s. 464(a) of the Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-46.
At trial, there was no issue that the elements of the offence had been proved and the trial judge, Farrar J. (as he then was), indicated that he was satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the requisite elements of the offence of counselling the commission of an offence had been established. He based this conclusion on the Ms. Doucet’s admission that the Crown had proved a prima facie case and on the audio and video tapes of recorded conversations with the undercover officer and a statement made on arrest. The only issue at trial was whether Ms. Doucet’s otherwise criminal acts were excused because of duress. The accused had raised that the common law defence of duress applied. The Crown argued that on the facts of this case, the components of duress were not present. But it did not argue at trial, as it did later on appeal, that the defence of duress was not available in law to the accused. The trial judge accepted her version and acquitted her on the basis she had established she was acting under duress.
The Nova Scotia Court of Appeal unanimously upheld her acquittal.
Reasons of the court
The Court allowed the Crown appeal. The majority entered a stay while the dissenting judge, Fish J., would have ordered a new trial, leaving it to the Crown to determine whether a retrial was in the public interest.
The Court accepted the facts found by the trial judge. The only issue was whether the defence of duress was available. The Court accepted the Crown’s argument, which was made for the first time, that duress was not available. Duress is available when one is compelled to commit a crime against an innocent third party. In this case, given the facts found by the trial judge, the husband would not be an innocent victim. Rather he would be the author of his own misfortune. Moreover, Ms. Doucet was never compelled to act as she did. The Court alluded to the possibility of invoking self-defence as a possible defence.
Fish J. found the granting of the stay of proceedings was inappropriate. He would have ordered a new trial. Any further defence advanced by the accused could be made then.
While not being available on the fact, the SCC's wider discussion of the law of duress in Canada is instructive. Duress is an excuse based defence which operates to negate criminal liability where the offence is the product of an accused’s morally involuntary conduct. There is both a statutory and common law defence of duress. Whereas the statutory defence will be available to a principal offender, the common law defence will be available to secondary offenders. A notable difference between the two defences is that whereas the common law defence of duress will be available to any charge, the statutory defence, as described in section 17 of the Criminal Code, contains a list of excluded offences, including murder.
Apart from this, the decision in Ryan brought the statutory and common law versions of the defence of duress into relative harmony. For one, There must have been an implicit or explicit threat of present or future death or bodily harm against accused or a third party that the accused reasonably believed would be carried out. Second, there must have been no safe avenue of escape available to the accused. Third, there must have been a close temporal link between the threat and the offence. Fourth, there must have been proportionality between the threat of harm and the offence carried out. Relatedly, the accused must have acted with reasonable fortitude in response to the threat. Fifth, and finally, the accused must not have been a part of a conspiracy while participating in the offence.
The insanity defense, also known as the mental disorder defense, is an affirmative defense by excuse in a criminal case, arguing that the defendant is not responsible for their actions due to an episodic or persistent psychiatric disease at the time of the criminal act. This is contrasted with an excuse of provocation, in which the defendant is responsible, but the responsibility is lessened due to a temporary mental state. It is also contrasted with a finding that a defendant cannot stand trial in a criminal case because a mental disease prevents them from effectively assisting counsel, from a civil finding in trusts and estates where a will is nullified because it was made when a mental disorder prevented a testator from recognizing the natural objects of their bounty, and from involuntary civil commitment to a mental institution, when anyone is found to be gravely disabled or to be a danger to themselves or to others.
The presumption of innocence is a legal principle that every person accused of any crime is considered innocent until proven guilty. Under the presumption of innocence, the legal burden of proof is thus on the prosecution, which must present compelling evidence to the trier of fact. If the prosecution does not prove the charges true, then the person is acquitted of the charges. The prosecution must in most cases prove that the accused is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If reasonable doubt remains, the accused must be acquitted. The opposite system is a presumption of guilt.
Attempted murder is a crime of attempt in various jurisdictions.
Automatism is a rarely used criminal defence. It is one of the mental condition defences that relate to the mental state of the defendant. Automatism can be seen variously as lack of voluntariness, lack of culpability (unconsciousness) or excuse (Schopp). Automatism means that the defendant was not aware of his or her actions when making the particular movements that constituted the illegal act. For example, Esther Griggs in 1858 threw her child out of a first floor window believing that the house was on fire, while having a sleep terror. In 2002, Peter Buck, lead guitarist of the band R.E.M., was cleared of several charges, including assault, which resulted from automatism brought on by a bad interaction between alcohol and sleeping pills. In a 2009 case in Aberporth in west Wales, Brian Thomas strangled his wife in their camper van, also during a sleep terror, when he mistook his wife for an intruder. The defence of automatism is denying that the person was acting in the sense that the criminal law demands. As such it is really a denial-of-proof – the defendant is asserting that the offence is not made out. The prosecution does not have to disprove the defence as is sometimes erroneously reported; the prosecution has to prove all the elements of the offence including the voluntary act requirement. Automatism is a defence even against strict liability crimes like dangerous driving, where no intent is necessary.
In England and Wales, a magistrates' court is a lower court which hears cases of summary offences and preliminary hearings for more serious ones. Some civil law matters are also decided here, notably family proceedings. In 2015, there were roughly 330 magistrates' courts in England and Wales, though the government was considering closing up to 57 of these. The jurisdiction of magistrates' courts and rules governing them are set out in the Magistrates' Courts Act 1980.
The High Court of Singapore is the lower division of the Supreme Court of Singapore, the upper division being the Court of Appeal. It consists of the chief justice and the judges of the High Court. Judicial Commissioners are often appointed to assist with the Court's caseload. There are two specialist commercial courts, the Admiralty Court and the Intellectual Property Court, and a number of judges are designated to hear arbitration-related matters. In 2015, the Singapore International Commercial Court was established as part of the Supreme Court of Singapore, and is a division of the High Court. The seat of the High Court is the Supreme Court Building.
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.
The Criminal Justice Act 2003 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It is a wide-ranging measure introduced to modernise many areas of the criminal justice system in England and Wales and, to a lesser extent, in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Common assault is an offence in English law. It is committed by a person who causes another person to apprehend the immediate use of unlawful violence by the defendant. In England and Wales, the penalty and mode of trial for this offence is provided by section 39 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988.
Murder is an offence under the common law of England and Wales. It is considered the most serious form of homicide, in which one person kills another with the intention to cause either death or serious injury unlawfully. The element of intentionality was originally termed malice aforethought, although it required neither malice nor premeditation. Baker, chapter 14 states that many killings done with a high degree of subjective recklessness were treated as murder from the 12th century right through until the 1974 decision in DPP v Hyam.
R v Ruzic, [2001] 1 SCR 687 is a leading decision of the Supreme Court of Canada on the common law defence of duress and constitutionality of the defence under section 17 of the Criminal Code. The Court held that section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms requires that the defence of duress be available to an accused even when they were not under immediate threat of bodily harm at the time the offence was committed.
In English law, the defence of necessity recognizes that there may be situations of such overwhelming urgency that a person must be allowed to respond by breaking the law. There have been very few cases in which the defence of necessity has succeeded, and in general terms there are very few situations where such a defence could even be applicable. The defining feature of such a defence is that the situation is not caused by another person and that the accused was in genuine risk of immediate harm or danger.
Duress in English law is a complete common law defence, operating in favour of those who commit crimes because they are forced or compelled to do so by the circumstances, or the threats of another. The doctrine arises not only in criminal law but also in civil law, where it is relevant to contract law and trusts law.
In the English law of homicide, manslaughter is a less serious offence than murder, the differential being between levels of fault based on the mens rea or by reason of a partial defence. In England and Wales, a common practice is to prefer a charge of murder, with the judge or defence able to introduce manslaughter as an option. The jury then decides whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty of either murder or manslaughter. On conviction for manslaughter, sentencing is at the judge's discretion, whereas a sentence of life imprisonment is mandatory on conviction for murder. Manslaughter may be either voluntary or involuntary, depending on whether the accused has the required mens rea for murder.
English criminal law concerns offences, their prevention and the consequences, in England and Wales. Criminal conduct is considered to be a wrong against the whole of a community, rather than just the private individuals affected. The state, in addition to certain international organisations, has responsibility for crime prevention, for bringing the culprits to justice, and for dealing with convicted offenders. The police, the criminal courts and prisons are all publicly funded services, though the main focus of criminal law concerns the role of the courts, how they apply criminal statutes and common law, and why some forms of behaviour are considered criminal. The fundamentals of a crime are a guilty act and a guilty mental state. The traditional view is that moral culpability requires that a defendant should have recognised or intended that they were acting wrongly, although in modern regulation a large number of offences relating to road traffic, environmental damage, financial services and corporations, create strict liability that can be proven simply by the guilty act.
Fault, as a legal term, refers to legal blameworthiness and responsibility in each area of law. It refers to both the actus reus and the mental state of the defendant. The basic principle is that a defendant should be able to contemplate the harm that his actions may cause, and therefore should aim to avoid such actions. Different forms of liability employ different notions of fault, in some there is no need to prove fault, but the absence of it.
Marital coercion was a defence to most crimes under English criminal law and under the criminal law of Northern Ireland. It is similar to duress. It was abolished in England and Wales by section 177 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, which came into force on 13 May 2014. The abolition does not apply in relation to offences committed before that date.
Bail in Canada refers to the release of a person charged with a criminal offence prior to being tried in court or sentenced. The Canadian Bill of Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantee the right not to be denied reasonable bail without just cause. That right is implemented by the Criminal Code, which provides several ways for a person to be released prior to a court appearance. A person may be released by a peace officer or by the courts. A release by the courts is officially known as a judicial interim release. There are also a number of ways to compel a person's appearance in court without the need for an arrest and release.
Canadian criminal law is governed by the Criminal Code, which includes the principles and powers in relation to criminal sentencing in Canada.
R v Hibbert, [1995] 2 SCR 973, is a Supreme Court of Canada decision on aiding and abetting and the defence of duress in criminal law. The court held that duress is capable of negating the mens rea for some offences, but not for aiding the commission of an offence under s. 21(1)(b) of the Criminal Code. Nonetheless, duress can still function as an excuse-based defence.
