Ontario's Justices of the Peace Discipline Adjudicative Process Lacks Consistency

     Some months ago I wrote on the lack of consistency in the adjudicative process at Ontario's Human Rights Tribunal.  I noted that in some cases adjudicators assessed the credibility of witnesses and cited established legal principles on the subject while in others they did not.  I have been hard at work reviewing some of the decisions issued with respect to the adjudication of judicial misconduct complaints involving Ontario's justices of the peace and I have discovered that just like the HRTO the adjudicative process involving justices of the peace discipline cases suffers from the same glaring problem.

      In the coming days I will look into two recent noteworthy cases involving justices of the peace, namely,
Vernon A. Chang Alloy (2010) and Errol Massiah (2012).  

Court of Appeal Issues Ruling on R v. Kampe

     The Court of Appeal for Ontario released its long-awaited Endorsement in R  v. Kampe.

     Readers will recall that this was the case in which the learned trial judge failed to appreciate and consider the s.15 constitutional violation raised by the Appellant and which violation was supported in the evidence before her.  The case involved a situation where a Black man and a White woman were seated in car where the police alleged they were "looking at a piece of crack cocaine in his hand.  The Appellant testified that the police dragged him out the car and on his testimony beat him up and then trumped up a charge of possession for the purpose on him.  The white woman was not only not charged but police did not obtain a statement from her or secure her identification particulars.  In addition, the Appellant asserted that the learned trial judge erred in law because she failed to apply and follow the Court of Appeal's decision in R  v. Brown 2003 Canlii 52142 (Ont.C.A.).

     The Court of Appeal's endorsement is a mere two pages, if that, cites no legal authorities and seems to suggest that it is not an error of law when lower judges do not follow binding authority.

     I will in the coming days have something to say about their endorsement.