Ontario court: intoxication valid defense in sexual assault/violent crimes

[Malthus]

This strikes me as one of those things that theoretically is reasonable but in practice would be easily abusable.

Depends on the will of the courts to allow it to be abused.

[Barrister]

This strikes me as one of those things that theoretically is reasonable but in practice would be easily abusable.

Depends on the will of the courts to allow it to be abused.

In other words, we're doomed.

[Malthus]

This strikes me as one of those things that theoretically is reasonable but in practice would be easily abusable.

Depends on the will of the courts to allow it to be abused.

In other words, we're doomed.

No that would be if it depended on our prosecutors.

(J/K 😉)

[The Brain]

"No control over"? So basically cases where the defendant fell and landed on the victim? Anything other than this seems to fall under something that the accused was in control of.

[11B4V]

I thought Canada was woke. Oh well.

[viper37]

This strikes me as one of those things that theoretically is reasonable but in practice would be easily abusable.

Depends on the will of the courts to allow it to be abused.

There was this case, a few years ago.  A doctor ingested windshield washing fluid and then killed his kids with multiple stab wounds.

His defense: he was intoxicated by the windshield washing fluid (some form of alcohol) and therefore not mentally responsible for his actions.  He had excellent experts to produce a testimony to that effet.  The court (jury) ruled in his favour.

On appeal, the crown made the argument that voluntary ingestion of a judgement altering substance shouldn't count and the judge erred on his side, demanding a new trial.
Guy Turcotte killings

The appeals court based its decision on new jurisprudence, in the case of Tommy Bouchard-Lebrun.  This man suffered from psychiatric problems and volunturaly used marijuana.  He then killed his roommate saying he saw a demon in his drug induced state.  As he was recognized not guilty, the appeal process went up to the Supreme court who declare his defense invalid, since he voluntary ingested the psychotic substance, knowing what it would do in his condition.


If the Ontario court of appeals ruling was standing, these two murderers would be free.

[DontSayBanana]

It's been a while, but I recall from my discussions in German law class 20+ years ago that the counter argument to this defense was that the accused (generally) got to this state of inebriation voluntarily and so the level of guilt might be reduced and lead to lower sentencing but not absolve completely from responsibility.

I'm gonna defer to the real lawtalkers here, but when I was a paralegal student, the one teaching us described it this way: if you're going to fall on that as a defense, it's on you to prove that you didn't voluntarily become intoxicated.  And things like alcoholism/drug addiction might warrant leniency in sentencing (at judicial discretion- I'm not aware of any formal laws or sentencing guidelines requiring leniency), but they don't rise to the level of an insanity defense in terms of absolving criminal responsibility.

Long story short: not really a blanket defense in the US, but a compelling enough story might get you some pity points in the sentencing phase.

[The Brain]

The way courts and lawmakers often view these things always bugged me. To me it sounds like a lot of "I didn't have control" is really "now that I'm sober I think it was a horrible idea". To me if you don't have control you can't for instance pick up a knife and stab someone. To me not having control is stuff like involuntary spasms and similar. If you lose bladder control you wet yourself, you don't walk up to someone, unzip, and pee on them. To me a human is the whole package, not just the cold reasoning of a sober brain.