Legal logic behind ruling
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled last week that a section of the Criminal Code preventing people from using self-induced extreme intoxication resulting in a state of automatism as a defence against certain criminal offences, including some violent crimes, is unconstitutional. It’s generating a lot of heat. Some fear the decision gives anyone who is grossly impaired by alcohol and/or drugs and commits violent crimes a getout-of-jail-free card.
Others worry the ruling is another disincentive for victims of violence to come forward — why bother if there’s no likelihood of justice?
But what the ruling does, in fact, do, is address a flaw in the current law that — while crafted with good intentions — was written with a blunt marker where a fine-point pen was needed.
One case at the heart of the Supreme Court decision involves Matthew Winston Brown, 26, who had several drinks and took magic mushrooms at a party in Calgary on Jan. 12, 2018.
His previous experience with psilocybin had given him a “fuzzy but positive feeling.” Not this time.
Within hours, Brown was running from the party, naked and agitated, into the cold night. He broke into the house of a stranger and beat her bloody with a broken broom handle, leaving lasting injuries and psychological trauma. He then broke into another house where the homeowners called the police, who found Brown in a confused stated, naked on the bathroom floor.
“He recalled coming to in hospital then waking later in a jail cell. … Brown later said he had no memory of what transpired at either of the two homes,” the court heard.
At the time, Brown argued he had no awareness of committing any crimes, with evidence presented at trial suggesting “he was in a psychotic state and had no willed control over his actions.”
While the Crown argued that Section 33.1 of the Criminal Code prevented Brown from raising this defence, the trial judge disagreed, finding that the section was unconstitutional.
Brown was acquitted. The Crown’s appeal of the decision wound up at the Supreme Court of Canada.
The recent unanimous Supreme Court ruling, written by Justice Nicholas Kasirer, states that the law forbidding the use of the automatism defence in cases of self-induced extreme intoxication goes against the fundamental rules of justice, because no one should be held liable for crimes committed when they were so incapacitated that they could not possibly have had the conscious intent — the guilty mind — required to commit them.
A summary of the Supreme Court ruling explains: “In Canada, two elements of fundamental justice are required for a person to be found guilty of a crime. They are: a guilty action; and a guilty mind. Neither element is present when a person is in a state of automatism.”
That’s not to say that people who knowingly get intoxicated and commit violent acts should not be held responsible — they are.
The Supreme Court plainly stated in its decision that “drunkenness, absent clear scientific evidence of automatism, is not a defence to general intent crimes, including crimes of violence such as sexual assault.”
Instead, the automatism defence is to be reserved only for rare cases where there is a demonstrable disconnect between body and mind, and where the individual, though capable of action, has no voluntary control over their actions.