Everyone deserves justice, even a former Ontario attorney-general driving an expensive car who finds himself in an altercation with a cyclist in which the cyclist is killed. Irrespective of whatever wealth, power or connections Michael Bryant may have, he was an Everyman. Anyone might find himself in his place one day, reacting in fear and panic to a wild, unexpected aggressor, and subject afterward to police charges and condemnation by the community. When criminal charges were dropped against him yesterday, it was a good day for justice.

Much of what was publicly believed about Michael Bryant’s fatal encounter on Aug. 31, 2009, with Darcy Sheppard turns out to have been false. He did not swerve across a street and ram Mr. Sheppard into a light post or tree or mailbox. He was not speeding along at 60 to 100 kilometres an hour.

Nor were any of the terrible events that night emblematic of the problems that car drivers and cyclists have sharing the road. Mr. Sheppard was simply a man out of control. Given that he paid for his actions with his life, it may seem an unnecessary further blow that he now be publicly judged. But it is necessary, because another man, Michael Bryant, was facing up to life in prison if convicted of criminal negligence causing death. He, not Mr. Sheppard, had the power of the state lined up against him. And everything that happened proceeded inexorably as a result of Mr. Sheppard’s own actions.

Other than the initial flurry of interest in the case immediately following the incident, I didn’t follow the details. This is an excellent example of media coverage severely biased against the defendant: what little I thought I knew about the case made it seem to be an open-and-shut case of vehicular manslaughter. As the Globe editorial points out, very little of what I “knew” about the case (from the media) turns out to have been true.

By revealing how a city employee seemed to spend virtually all his time following her in a city truck, she has directed much-needed attention to city’s supervisory practices.

That’s in addition to highlighting, by explaining what it is like to be stalked, the nature of — and remedy for — a crime that can be devastating in its psychological effects, even if nothing worse happens.

De Blois, 40, who works at Youth Court, told The Gazette’s Katherine Wilton that at first she thought she could handle the situation herself. But in the months before the stalker, 49-year-old André Martel, was arrested, De Blois said she felt terrorized. She lost 23 pounds and had trouble sleeping.

Even after Martel pleaded guilty to criminal harassment and was conditionally released on bail, he continued to follow De Blois, she says. The lawyer suddenly saw the justice system through different eyes. “I can’t imagine what it must be like for a regular person who is not a lawyer, who doesn’t have contacts with a police officer or a crown prosecutor,” she said.

“Why were taxpayers subsidizing a stalker?”, Montreal Gazette, 2010-04-23

In the middle of an otherwise rote piece in a Toronto-area newspaper about how Stephen Harper is just too gosh-darn mean to criminals, there appeared this remarkable passage: “Judges are skilled at devising creative ways to fight back against laws they believe may skew the system. For example, Judge Cole said the elimination of two-for-one pre-trial credit has prompted judges to begin talking openly about forcing trials to be held more quickly. He said Canadian judges may also start compensating by intentionally lowering sentences: ‘That appears to have been the experience in other jurisdictions where Draconian sentencing policies have been forced upon the judiciary.’ ”

The passage is noteworthy for a number of reasons. Neither Justice Cole nor the newspaper’s justice reporter, both of whom can be assumed to have at least a glancing familiarity with the role of judges in our constitutional democracy, saw anything striking in characterizing the proper task of the judiciary as “fighting back” against laws they don’t like.

Nor do they find anything striking about a judge viewing duly enacted legislation as something being “forced upon” the judiciary — as if it were the judges who were being sent to jail.

And judges won’t just be “fighting back” against Parliament — in order to make good on the threat of handing down “intentionally” lower sentences, they will need to ignore case-law precedent. Evidently, neither Parliament nor the previous decisions of judges themselves will be allowed to stand in the way of the determination of certain members of the judiciary to treat convicted criminals lightly.

It’s no surprise that certain members of the judiciary think of themselves as being better able to determine what “appropriate” punishment might be . . . after all, within the statute and case law, that’s what they’re supposed to do. It’s the expansion of that notion that they know better and don’t feel they should be bound by the letter of the law. That’s several steps too far.

A millionaire businessman who fought back against a knife-wielding burglar was jailed for two-and-a-half years yesterday. But his attacker has been spared prison.

Munir Hussain, 53, and his family were tied up and told to lie on the floor by career criminal Waled Salem, who burst into his home with two other masked men.

Mr Hussain escaped and attacked Salem with a metal pole and a cricket bat. But yesterday it was the businessman who was starting a prison sentence for his ‘very violent revenge’.

Jailing him, Judge John Reddihough said some members of the public would think that 56-year-old Salem ‘deserved what happened to him’ and that Mr Hussain ‘should not have been prosecuted’.

But had he spared Mr Hussain jail, the judge said, the ‘rule of law’ would collapse.

He said: ‘If persons were permitted to take the law into their own hands and inflict their own instant and violent punishment on an apprehended offender rather than letting the criminal justice system take its course, then the rule of law and our system of criminal justice, which are hallmarks of a civilised society, would collapse.’

Salem, who has previous convictions, has already been given a non-custodial sentence despite carrying out what the judge called a ‘serious and wicked’ attack.

Well, it’s nice to know that some judges carry the best interests of “society” close to their hearts. And he’s right, you know: society would indeed collapse if the courts were forced to spend their time trying and sentencing career criminals like Salem. They’re career criminals. Custodial sentences would interfere with their careers, which would be a serious infringement of their human rights. Can’t have that.

The courts, however, are well situated to send serious messages to wanton millionaires like Hussain, who need to be regularly reminded that their wealth and privilege does not give them rights over and above those enjoyed by normal non-millionaires. I have no need to remind you that non-millionaires are not allowed to defend themselves against criminals either.

So, clearly, justice is served.

In some parallel universe, anyway.

Indeed, my friends, welcome to our world.

Not only have many defendants been sentenced for stuff the jury said they didn’t do (or at least wasn’t proven), but yesterday the Supreme Court refused to do anything about it. The cert denial came in the case of Mark Hurn of my hometown, Madison, Wis. Hurn ate 15 years extra years in prison for possessing crack cocaine, even though a jury acquitted him of the charge. It’s true. Though he was convicted of having powder cocaine in his house, (for which he was looking at two or three years in prison), he was sentenced to almost 18 years. Why? Because even though the jury acquitted him of the crack charge, the judge kind of figured he’d done it and therefore found, by a preponderance of the evidence that he’d done it, and sent him to prison as if the jury had actually said “Guilty” rather than “Not Guilty.”

What was once considering a normal rite of passage, typical curiosity that the newly sexualized young have about themselves, their bodies, and the bodies of others, has become a heinous crime. Not long ago a curious adolescent or child, caught exploring, or playing doctor in the back yard, was given a talking-to, sent to bed early, and warned to not do it again — a warning most heeded for at least another few years, after which time warnings were useless. Today, it has been criminalized, and criminalized in a way far exceeding crimes of violence. A youth who has sex with another youth, even if voluntary, could well face legal sentences far worse than if they had killed their friend.

The absurdity of charging a teenager with statutory rape for having sex with another teenager (and sometimes even charging each partner for victimizing the other) shouldn’t need to be discussed — it’s flat-out insane for the legal system to be involved in the vast majority of these cases. They shouldn’t even be cases!

It is literally true that a teen would be punished far less severely for murder than for consensual sexual contact with another teen. A murderer, after a trial is sentenced to a term in prision (with the possibility of parole/early release in many cases). After being released from prison, they’ve “paid their debt to society” and at least in theory can try to resume a normal life.

Someone who gets caught up in the “sexual offender” category will be punished for the rest of his or her life: once their names go on the official register, they will never, ever, be free again. They can’t work in any job that might mean contact with the general public (if they can even get hired at all). They can’t live within arbitrary distances of schools, playgrounds, or other areas where children might gather . . . which in practice means they can’t legally live anywhere.

How is this in any way proportional to the “crime”? How can this be called “justice”?