Latest Blog Articles

This article, written by Solomon Friedman, originally appeared in the Ottawa Citizen on February 1, 2014. On Dec. 14, 1955, Nancy Parker was brutally murdered in her home in Lincoln, Neb. Her hands and feet were bound. Her face was badly bruised. There was a single cord tied around her slender neck. Later, a forensic examination would reveal that Nancy Parker had been beaten, sexually assaulted then strangled. Nancy’s husband, Darrell, had come home on his lunch break from his job as city forester, he told police, when he came upon the gruesome scene in the master bedroom. Suspicion quickly [...]

This article, written by Solomon Friedman, originally appeared in the Ottawa Citizen on March 1, 2013. Nobody likes to lose. This is particularly true in the criminal justice system, where the stakes are so high. A person accused of a crime faces enormous jeopardy – the possibility of a criminal record, steep fines, and of course, incarceration. Our legal system depends on many important checks, balances and legal rights to ensure fairness and equity for all. At the same time, we know that no one is perfect. Judges and juries err. And these mistakes must be corrected. Under Canadian law, [...]

This article, written by Solomon Friedman, originally appeared in the Ottawa Citizen on February 8, 2013. The courtroom is the natural home of the criminal lawyer. It can often be confusing, however, for justice system participants — be they accused persons, complainants or witnesses — to understand the distinct roles played by the different courts in our criminal system. Often, clients will have heard about the “superior court”; they are less familiar with the provincial court or the Court of Appeal. In Canada, criminal offences are generally divided into two categories: summary conviction offences and indictable offences. Summary conviction matters [...]

This article, written by Solomon Friedman, originally appeared in the Ottawa Citizen on May 31, 2012. The defence’s counterpart in the criminal justice system is the prosecuting lawyer, generically referred to as the Crown Attorney, or simply, “the Crown.” Although our court system is an adversarial one, the two sides are not simply mirror images of one another. Unlike defence counsel, who are specifically enjoined to be biased and zealous in the pursuit of their client’s interests, the prosecutor must take a dispassionate and detached view of the court proceedings, all in the name of the administration of justice. Our [...]

This article, written by Solomon Friedman, originally appeared in the Ottawa Citizen on February 10, 2012. In a previous article, we discussed the right to silence, its limitations and the role it plays in the context of a police interrogation. The right to silence, however, is incomplete without its legal Siamese twin: the right to counsel. These two rights, Justice Morris Fish of the Supreme Court famously wrote, “are close companions, like glove and hand.” Through the course of the “Right to Know” series thus far, it has most likely become apparent that our rights and freedoms are complex, nuanced [...]