this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
34 points (100.0% liked)

Canada

10194 readers
894 users here now

What's going on Canada?



Related Communities


🍁 Meta


🗺️ Provinces / Territories


🏙️ Cities / Local Communities

Sorted alphabetically by city name.


🏒 SportsHockey

Football (NFL): incomplete

Football (CFL): incomplete

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer


💻 Schools / Universities

Sorted by province, then by total full-time enrolment.


💵 Finance, Shopping, Sales


🗣️ Politics


🍁 Social / Culture


Rules

  1. Keep the original title when submitting an article. You can put your own commentary in the body of the post or in the comment section.

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage: lemmy.ca


founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Eczpurt@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I am completely unfamiliar with the Canadian judicial system so I hope someone can help explain!

If 4 of the 5 players declined to testify, no matter the verdict, isn't that a lot of relevant testimony missing to reach verdict? Two thirds of the alleged parties involved had nothing to say. Considering the victim in this case was in the witness box for something like 9 days, it's a little confusing in my eyes to not even have them testify for 20 minutes.

Like some other jurisdictions, Canada has protections against self-incrimination.

Any person charged with an offence has the right ... not to be compelled to be a witness in proceedings against that person in respect of the offence ...

[–] Riverview_Legal@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 day ago

Section 11(c) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms confirms that defendants cannot be compelled to testify in their own matter. It's Canada's verision of the right to remain silent.

A witness can be compelled to testify however their testimony can't be used against them in other proceeding except for prejury charges. This is found in section 13 of the Charter.

Ultimately, it's up to the Crown to prove their case. It all comes back to being innocent before proven guilty. Section 11(d) of the Charter.

If you were to flip it all around, you would be considered guilty until proven innocent, you would always have to testify, and any witnesses that could help you would be open to being charged. In that scenario, good luck at not ending up in jail. The vast majority of defendants don't have the resources to take on the State in a criminal matter.

[–] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Because she/they made the complaint and prosecuted it. The onus is on the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the defendant is guilty of the charges.

The defense need not nor should not be required to lift a finger unless their lawyers saw the need for it. The stand is always a huge risk and theres plenty of opportunity to poke holes in the case since the prosecution basically had to put her on the stand in order for the case to have any credibillity