Cold court

Llew Hounsell: The result of the ruling is that accused murderers, rapists, muggers, thieves, arsonists and drug dealers have been and will be released without ever going to trial.

Imagine if the NHL had changed the rules midway through the season and then applied them to games already played — thereby often changing the outcome of these games.

Of course, it didn’t happen. Any rule change is meant for future games. This gives the players, coaches and officials time to adjust to the new playing field. It’s a sensible and logical way to run any sport’s league. Unfortunately, sensibility and logic have abandoned the judges of the Supreme Court of Canada. Consider the following:

Under the R vs. Jordan ruling which the Supreme Court rendered in July 2016, it set very precise guidelines about how long a case should take to move through the justice system. If a case exceeded these guidelines, it would be thrown out and the accused freed.

This would make perfect sense if the court had applied its ruling to cases that entered the system after its ruling had been brought down. Instead, it applied its ruling to cases that had already been in the system for any number of years.

The result of the ruling is that accused murderers, rapists, muggers, thieves, arsonists and drug dealers have been and will be released without ever going to trial. The injustice of the court’s decision was so obvious that four of the Supreme Court justices voted against it — resulting in an almost unheard of 5-4 split within the court.

Now, imagine you are a victim of one of these accused criminals who walks free. When you cry out for justice, who will listen — especially when the Supreme Court (the highest court in the land) has made it clear the rights of victims are irrelevant to the judicial process?

On June 16, the Supreme Court had a chance to repair the terrible harm it had done. Instead, it maintained the ruling with a 7-0 vote. On each occasion, the Supreme Court has been very logical in its explanation for its decision.

This reminds me of an incident which happened during the Vietnam War. An American officer was asked why his troops had destroyed a friendly village. His sincere reply which was perfectly logical to him was “It became necessary to destroy the village to save it.” The villagers — now homeless — were no more comforted by the officer’s cold logic than the victims who have been denied justice have been comforted by the cold logic of the Supreme Court judges.

Usually, Canadians are very proud of their country — and rightly so — but this time there can only be shame.

Llew Hounsell Corner Brook

The result of the ruling is that accused murderers, rapists, muggers, thieves, arsonists and drug dealers have been and will be released without ever going to trial.