Supreme Court frees battered woman
OTTAWA— Hours after winning a huge personal victory at Canada’s top court, an impassive Nicole Ryan said simply she was “relieved” not to face a retrial for plotting to have a hit man kill her abusive husband.
“I hope I can re-establish my life,” said the high school teacher, smiling fleetingly at a news conference Friday broadcast from Halifax. She wants to work again, and to re-establish contact with her daughter, Aimée.
The girl turns 13 in March and has been with her father, Michael, since Ryan was charged nearly five years ago in a “sting” operation after trying to hire an undercover Mountie to murder him. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Friday that abused women who fight their aggressors may try to claim self-defence.
But the court said they do not have legal recourse to claim “duress” if they commit a crime.
However, in Ryan’s case, by an 8-1 majority, the judges halted any further prosecution, citing the “enormous toll” of years of threats and abuse by her soldier-husband, Michael Ryan, failures by police to protect her, and prosecution under a law that was unclear.
Justices Louis LeBel and Thomas Cromwell wrote it was “disquieting” that Nova Scotia authorities “were much quicker to intervene to protect Mr. Ryan than they had been to respond to her request for help in dealing with his reign of terror over her.”
Justice Morris Fish said further prosecution decisions ought to have been up to the Crown attorney. Of the police inaction, Ryan said only, “it’s sad,” but otherwise sat straight and still as her lawyer, Joel Pink, said the ruling does not give licence to kill: “I do not believe this judgment sends a message to battered wives that you can hire a hit man on your husbands.” Ryan did not argue “self-defence” at trial, said Pink, because he did not believe she technically met the criminal code’s definition. Separated from her husband at the time, she faced no imminent threat or physical attack. The court did not explicitly state that Ryan was covered under selfdefence. “In essence, they have said that, but they haven’t said it; they haven’t clarified it,” said Kim Pate, executive director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies. “Our fear is that this will not necessarily help other women.” University of Ottawa professor Elizabeth Sheehy said the court appeared to recognize Ryan was “acting in a way that was morally innocent.” But it did not clearly say “that if a woman is in this kind of position, we must find a defence available to her. They are almost saying women like her may be out of luck.” The law of self-defence has since been rewritten by the federal government following Toronto shopkeeper David Chen’s assault acquittal, but is not yet in force. Sheehy said it’s possible the court was mindful the new law is “far more open-ended, and might have been available to Nicole Ryan.”
However, Friday’s 9-0 ruling doesn’t go there, nor does it revisit the 1990 decision in Lavallee that first upheld the notion of a “battered woman syndrome.” What it did was draw a clear difference between duress and self-defence.
“Duress” is a “legal excuse for wrongful acts” committed against an innocent third party, the court said. It excuses those who realistically have no choice but to commit a crime.
In self-defence, the act is not wrong or morally blameworthy; and the victim is the author of his own misfortune. Self-defence is not a legal excuse, but a “justification based on the principle that it is lawful — in defined circumstances — to resist force or a threat of force with force.”
Nicole Doucet, then 21, married Michael Ryan, then 25, in 1992.
The court underlined Nicole was the victim of a violent, abusive and controlling husband, and believed his threats that he would seriously hurt or kill her and Aimée.