LAWS 2301 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Insanity Defense, Law Society
16 Jun 2016
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Act as minister of justice / servant of justice /officer of the court. Be independent: stand apart from rich & poor & in-betweens. Prosecutorial values more managerial than adversarial or justice oriented. Great deal of discretion & little accountability; secretive process. On appeal for 1st degree murder conviction. Killed a police officer & relied on insanity defence. Chief defence witness was psychiatrist who testified that d was paranoid schizophrenic & was psychotic at time of offence. Crown in summation to jury referred to psychiatrist as good at telling fairy tales, making several references to this term. Judge made no reference to this in charge to jury. Courts in their rulings on evidence, etc. Direct interventions by court: contempt charge, orders to pay costs. Appeal from decision denying r"s motion that ag or ns legal aid be compelled to fund counsel of choice. Had legal aid; wanted right to pick own counsel.
