While the jury takes a break this weekend from deliberations, no verdict yet, I thought I would take advantage of the quiet period to collect my thoughts in a stream of consciousness video posted at the bottom of this journal. While there are more points I wish I could have added or elaborated on, my goal was to focus on the root problem of quality of evidence in the Harvey Weinstein case. I've also posted links to some of the trial transcripts so you can see for yourself how lacking in quality the prosecution's case is. I was relying on CourtTV's repository of daily transcript uploads until they recently removed the links from their page.  The transcripts I did download stayed in my browser history so I was able to recollect those, however the transcripts I never did download are missing from the list below.

A recent case heard by the Supreme Court of Canada, R. v. M.R.H., involved the issue of indictments that combined multiple alleged historical sexual assault incidents into one individual count. Since the removal of the statute of limitations on sex crimes approximately three decades ago, this has been common practice by police services and Crown prosecutors in the name of "simplification". The insidious practice combines distinctly separate incidents that had allegedly occurred in different places  (sometimes even​​

An important new decision that came out of the Alberta Court of Appeals (R v Ryon, 2019 ABCA 36) can not only reduce wrongful convictions, but it can also free some of the wrongly convicted and jailed (if appellate lawyers know about it). This video will illustrate just how difficult it is not only for juries to know what to do, but also judges when it comes to reaching the correct verdict for the innocent accused and factually innocent when using what's known as the WD test. As a non-lawyer I try to break it down for you in the video below.

Both the accused and the complainant admitted to consensual heavy petting while on a cot, high on drugs  inside of a tent after having met at an outdoor music festival. The woman claimed she said 'no' to penetration, but that when he positioned himself on top of her he did not stop and briefly penetrated her before stopping. The man's defense was that he did not penetrate her at all and did indeed stop when she said 'no'. His conviction was overturned on the basis that the trial judge did not properly apply the credibility assessment when using the W(D) test to the plausibility of both claims. My discussion on this case is in the video below.

Case Study #1: Judge Ignores Major Inconsistencies
A man was accused of historical sexual abuse against a child while he was a minor and was tried in a youth court as a result. The complainant was an adult at the time of the complaint and her evidence mainly relied on the inference that she had a bed wetting problem as a result of ongoing sexual abuse. It was a judge-only trial. The appeal panel found the trial judge failed to resolve major inconsistencies when accepting the account of the complainant as true. My discussion on this case is in the video below.