A foiled plot to kill people at a mall in Halifax brings up some tricky aspects of criminal justice.
I always find it a little bit uncomfortable when people are arrested for a crime they might commit. Apparently, Randall Shepherd and Lindsay Souvannarath, the two young adults who were arrested on conspiracy to commit murder charges had threatened to go into the mall on Valentine’s Day and randomly shoot people before committing suicide.
We have to assume, of course, that police had ample evidence to suggest it was a credible and imminent threat to actually detain someone.
And I recognize the need for conspiracy statutes on the books. Especially when it comes to murder, authorities must have the means to prevent a horrible crime from happening.
Still, it gives pause. We have created a crime to deal with the fact that in a free and democratic society you cannot punish someone for something they have not done. So, the crime is not murder, the crime is planning to commit murder and it carries the same penalties, by the way.
We do this all the time, of course. Back in the day, refusing to take a breath test was a strategy for getting around a drunk driving charge so we made refusing to take a breath test a crime carrying the same penalty as drunk driving.
Another example of our use of liberal use of detention to prevent crime is denying release of an offender on the basis that he is likely to reoffend or fail to appear in court.
In this case, it is a judge making a judgement call about crimes that have not been committed. We do not call this punishment, we call it remand. I suspect the detainees might see it differently.
In any event, it all comes down to balance. Justice Minister Peter MacKay held up this case as a perfect example of that balance in action.
“It’s crucial that attacks such as this one must be prevented from happening, whenever possible,” he said. “The law enforcement community must be provided with the tools they need to protect Canadians. If you commit serious crimes or plot or plan to do so, you will be apprehended and locked up for a long time.”
We will see if the evidence bears that out, beyond a reasonable doubt, of course, because there is always the possibility they never would gone through with it.
