And the verdict is ...
The Justice System can't be bothered to find out
According to the CBC, Crystal Duquette is unhappy.
I don’t blame her.
In April of 2024, Crystal’s daughter Melissa was murdered in Saskatoon. A few months later, three people were arrested and charged with first-degree murder.
Last week – 338 days after the suspects were arrested and charged, Crystal was informed that the charges would be stayed and the trio arrested. According to an e-mail from Saskatchewan Justice to the CBC:
“After careful consideration, it was determined this case no longer met the prosecution standard. Given this assessment, the prosecutor directed a stay of proceedings.”
And that’s all we know about the case. It leaves two basic possibilities open:
Evidence has emerged that the three accused are innocent. In that case, three innocent people would have spent 338 days locked up in remand custody for a crime they did not commit. If this possibility is true, perhaps more (different) arrests are pending.
The three are guilty, but the prosecutor has decided not to bother proceeding to trial. If this is the case, the three will have served 338 days in jail for first-degree murder.
Given the opaque and sclerotic nature of Canada’s criminal justice system, we’ll probably never know (unless someone else is charged and convicted.) However, I do note that the charges were stayed rather than withdrawn. Legally, this means that the three accused have not been “cleared”. The charges can be re-activated at any point in the next year. This once again leaves us contemplating two possibilities:
The three accused are innocent. If so, Saskatchewan Justice has decided to leave the stigma of being charged but not cleared hanging over the reputations of the accused – not to mention the stress of knowing that the handcuffs can be clamped on again at any time.
The three are guilty, but either the police have not collected enough evidence for a conviction or Saskatchewan Justice can’t be bothered to take the case to court.
None of these scenarios are good.
What’s even more disturbing is that this sort of thing is far too common.
Most criminal cases never have a verdict
In 2022/23 (the most recent data compiled by Statistics Canada), Canadian courts dealt with 319 cases of homicide. 124 cases resulted in a conviction. 9 resulted in an acquittal. 21 cases resulted in something like a “not criminally responsible” verdict. The most common result – 163 cases – was the charge being stayed or withdrawn.
That’s right. In 2022/23, over 51 percent of homicide cases brought before the courts resulted in a no decision.
Yikes.
And things are getting worse. A decade early, “only” (sic) 41 percent of homicide cases in Canada resulted in the no-decision of charges being stayed or withdrawn.
It’s not just for homicide that our court system has decided reaching decisions is optional.
In 2022/23, 58 percent of all charges involving “crimes against the person” (i.e. violent crimes such as homicide, attempted homicide, robbery, assault, and sexual assault) resulted in the charges being stayed or withdrawn. That’s up from 41 percent a decade earlier.
In 2022/23, 52 percent of all charges – violent, property, drug, etc. – resulted in the no-decision of charges being stayed or withdrawn. That’s up from 31 percent a decade earlier.
Canada’s court system has been dysfunctional for a long time. It’s now gotten to the point where the most common result of criminal charges being laid is that …. nothing happens. The charges just wither away.
Last year, a student told me of a birthday celebration gone wrong. Family members did too much celebrating in a bar. There was a scuffle with a bouncer. Celebrants spent the night in the slammer (a happy birthday indeed). My student was charged with assault. She told me that she was going to plead guilty to get the embarrassing mess over with. I cleared my throat and made the standard “I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice” qualifications. Then I predicted that if she pleaded not guilty, the prosecutor would eventually stay the charges rather than going to trial.
And that’s what happened.
In the case of a drunken scuffle turned into an assault charge, this was not a completely inappropriate result.
But in cases of first-degree murder?
Come on.
Those cases need to be resolved.
If innocent, the accused need to be cleared either through an acquittal or an unequivocal withdrawal of charges combined with a statement of factual innocence.
If guilty, the accused need to be prosecuted and (hopefully) convicted.
The no-decision of charges being stayed should not be an option for murder charges. But that is what happens for the majority of homicide charges in Canada.
No decision means no justice.
For anyone.
One more thing.
I’ve talked about the growing propensity of prosecutors in Canada clearing off their desks by staying charges. It gets worse. Criminal acts are less and less likely to result in charges being laid in the first place.
In the most recent decade for which we have data (ending in 2022/23):
There was a one percent decline in the number of homicide charges being laid before the courts even though the number of actual homicides increased by 73 percent.
There was an 18 percent decline in the number of charges for “crimes against the person” even as the number of violent crimes reported to police increased by 30 percent.
There was a 43 percent decline in the number of total charges filed with the courts even as the number of total crimes reported to police increased by 16 percent.
The bottom line
Crystal Duquette has every reason to be unhappy. In fact, she has every reason to be incandescent with rage. Up to this point, Canada’s criminal justice system has completely failed at getting any modicum of justice for her daughter.
The sad reality is that Crystal is not alone.
Canada’s justice system is becoming less and less able to ensure that criminal acts result in criminal charges.
And it’s less and less able to actually deal with the charges that do get laid. It’s inexcusable that over half of criminal charges in Canada – including for charges such as murder – simply fall off the side of prosecutors’ desks.
There is more to say on this. As our Criminal justice system actually deals with less and less of the crime that is occurring, it is taking longer to (not?) do so. However, I’ll leave this aspect for another day since I’ve already thrown a lot of numbers at you already.