A businessman in British Columbia who is alleged to be connected to Asian organized crime was allowed to buy a piece of a casino by a government employee. Shortly after, that same government employee was hired by the casino. The accusation, which came to light as a result of a whistleblower, is only one example of organized crime’s infiltration and corruption of British Columbia government casinos according to an RCMP anti-illegal gaming report.

A recent expose on CBC’s the Fifth Estate dropped a bombshell on the criminal justice system after they revealed that Alberta Justice buried medical reports contradicting autopsies that were relied on in court to convict multiple people, many of whom were charged with murder.

On November 28, 2019, the Alberta Court of Appeal came down hard on wholesale fentanyl traffickers and created a 9-year sentencing starting point. This means that a person convicted of wholesale trafficking or possession for the purpose of trafficking is facing 9 years in jail. Keep in mind, 9 years in jail is just the starting point.

What happens to your privacy interests once you send a text message? The Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in R v. Marakah found that depending on the circumstances, a person does maintain privacy rights on outgoing text messages. In Marakah, the Supreme Court looked at whether the appellant had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his text messages that were seized pursuant to a search warrant at both his and his co-accused residences.

In what has become a much more common occurrence across Canada and the United States, Baltimore’s State’s Attorney, Marilyn Mosby, has started the ominous task of having the courts throw out almost 800 cases as a result of the actions of 25 corrupt cops in that city. An investigation revealed significant reasons to distrusts over a dozen cops in addition to eight police convicted in what is termed the Gun Trace Task Force scandal.

The question of whether money seized by police during a criminal investigation and considered proceeds of crime can be retuned to the accused was recently decided by the Supreme Court of Canada. In R v. Rafilovich, the accused was arrested in possession of cocaine for the purposes of trafficking. While searching his various vehicles and apartments, police seized roughly $42,000 in cash as potential proceeds of crime under Part XII.2 of the Criminal Code.

Alcohol breath tests are something that the criminal justice system in Canada relies on as being a reliable source of scientific measurement of an accused person’s blood/alcohol content. If it is established that the instrument was in proper working operating order, the blood alcohol content reading at the time of reading is conclusive proof at trial.

There have been a number of recent incidents of police officers in Canada ticketing drivers for charging their cell phones while their vehicle is in motion. In none of these cases was the driver actually using or looking at their phone, but police nonetheless were of the mistaken belief that this constituted distracted driving.

The lack of an available prosecutor flies in the face of the policy that domestic violence trials be heard within 90 days after the province created a court dedicated to domestic violence.