YEAR ENDS WITH WEED, WHACKO AND WHACKED

Reasonable Doubt

Marijuana, Michael Jackson and murder made the headlines in the final days
of 2003.

Last week, the Supreme Court of Canada ended the protracted cannabis debate
in our courts by ruling that the crime of marijuana possession is
constitutionally sound. Later that week, Michael Jackson made a pre-emptive
strike by starting to call his defence to child molestation charges when he
testified in the superior court of television.

While Jackson was proclaiming his innocence, Toronto Police Chief Julian
Fantino was bemoaning yet another weekend of shootings in the city and once
again calling for a public inquiry into the failings of our system of
criminal justice.

Although marijuana, Michael Jackson and murder have few criminological
connections, it is clear that these three year-end stories should make us
question the health and vitality of contemporary criminal justice.

On the marijuana issue, it would not be proper for me to extensively
comment upon the shortcomings of the Supreme Court decision as I was
involved in this constitutional challenge.

However, I will say that millions of marijuana smokers are perplexed by the
court's reasoning that imposing criminal punishment is an effective and
rational way to protect people from ill-defined and speculative health risks.

The court failed to acknowledge that, for the past few decades, American
researchers have received vast sums of government money to identify and
discover a wide array of health risks arising from the use of marijuana,
but these researchers have been as successful in finding this smoking gun
as the U.S. military has been in finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

By upholding the marijuana laws, Canada lost an opportunity to start
cleaning up its overburdened criminal justice system. It would have been
nice to say goodbye to the tens of thousands of cannabis charges that are
dumped into criminal courts every year and clog up the system. Perhaps Paul
Martin's experience with a hash brownie and his time spent with rock star
Bono will lead him to champion decriminalization, but I'm only expecting a
lot of election promises and little decisive action.

It is not a good time for indecision because another Askov crisis is
looming. Elijah Askov was the alleged bad-boy extortionist who had his
charges thrown out because of years of delay in the Brampton courts. The
Askov application is the name now given to a defence application to stay
proceedings on the basis of a violation of the constitutional right to be
tried within a reasonable time. Askov's name has been immortalized, and
apparently thousands of criminal defendants are lining up to pray at his
altar as we speak.

The first Askov crisis led to the staying of more than 50,000 charges in
the early 1990s, and the Provincial Auditor reported last month that
Ontario courts are now burdened by the highest backlog of cases in the past
decade.

The second coming of the Askov crisis has been foreshadowed by the fact
that some Ontario judges have been strongly condemning the length and
conditions of pre-trial detention.

There will never be an Askov crisis in the unreal world of celebrity
justice. It looks as if the Prince of Pop has figured out how to combat
court delay. In quickly taking his case to American network television, he
ensured that any potential juror not currently in a coma will have clearly
heard his side of the story far in advance of trial. Why wait for a trial
when you have the money and fame to be able to fight your case without
delay in the court of public opinion?

The Jackson televised plea of innocence has been followed by intense, and
largely vacuous, analysis by a motley crew of experts pontificating about
his body language, his choice of makeup and his choice of words. Many are
already prepared to render a verdict before a trial date has even been set.

Once you leave the realm of Neverland, the real judicial process does not
unfold so smoothly for the vast majority of accused people who can barely
afford to buy a minute of airtime on Speaker's Corner.

So this year ended with millions of pot smokers denouncing the ruling to
maintain the label of criminality on their pursuit of happiness and
millions of television viewers sitting on couches dissecting the Prince of
Pop's linguistic nuances and facial twitches. While obsessing over these
arguably frivolous matters, Toronto had yet another weekend of fatal
shootings. Fantino has dramatically warned us that "gun-crazed gangsters
terrorize at will".

I have never believed there is a direct causal link between shooting sprees
and the supposed leniency and inefficiency of the courts, but Fantino may
be right in calling for some form of public inquiry into the administration
of criminal justice.

At an inquiry I would like to ask the chief how he can continue to waste
valuable resources chasing cannabis criminals when he has too few resources
to control firearm violence.

I'd also be curious to ask him if he thinks Michael Jackson is guilty.