As a crime reporter writing for a general audience, I have gotten pretty used to playing fast and loose with some of the technicalities of the justice system.
For example, this week we have a headline that reads: “Man jailed 18 months for drunk driving.”
For all intents and purposes, that’s a true story, although technically it’s not.
Drunk driving as we, and most of the public refers to it colloquially, almost always consists of two charges under the Criminal Code Section 253, Operating while impaired 253 sub (1) sub (a) and Operating with BAC (blood alcohol content) over 80 milligrams of alcohol in one hundred millilitres of blood. 253 sub (1) sub (b).
Defendants almost always plead guilty to the second charge commonly referred ti as point-zero-eight which is dead easy to prove because the police almost always have science, i.e., breathalyzer readings, to bakc it up. In return, the Crown almost always drops the first charge, commonly called drunk driving which is not as easy to prove especially if the person is an expert drinker and the readings are close to the legal limit.
If the second charge is absent, the first charge is usually accompanied by a charge under Section 253 sub (5) for failing or refusing to comply with a breath demand, which carries the exact same penalty as drunk driving and/or point-zero-eight.
One way or another they are going to get you. I have never had anyone complain about us publishing they were were convicted of drunk driving because technically they were convicted of having a BAC of more than .08.
Sometimes it is not a matter of playing fast and loose, however. Sometimes a really tight deadline lends itself to extrapolating certain events based on how the system generally works. I have received a complaint about that, quite recently in fact.
We also have a story in this edition titled “Suspects in C.I. assault appear in court.” In my original story about this, I said police had arrested two women following an incident at the local watering hole. That, I admit, was an assumption I had made based on the fact they had been charged with assault.
That is normally the case, but police don’t necessarily have to arrest people to charge them.
In Canada, if a police officer is satisfied on reasonable grounds that that an arrest is not necessary to establish the identity of the person, secure or preserve evidence, or prevent the continuation of the offence or the commission of another offence, they can issue the person an appearance notice instead.
There were some people who were none to happy with me and, of course, as we always do when we make errors, we immediately offered to run a correction the next week. For some reason they didn’t want us to. Go figure.
For the vast majority of readers, though, that is too fine a distinction to matter when the substantive fact of a case is that a person has been charged with an offence.
I also tend to gloss over the distinction between types of releases from custody. Police have several avenues at their disposal including promises to appear, recognizances and undertakings. I am it is very important to the issuing officer what kind of release they use, but for the general public the pertinent facts are whether the person was released and what kind of conditions were placed on them.
If the police do not release the suspect, the courts are obligated to grant bail if at all possible. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, guarantees the right not to be denied reasonable bail without just cause.
Again, technically speaking it is called judicial interim release, not bail, but that would be splitting hairs for the purposes of news reporting.
The courts also have a bunch of types of JIRs available, but I tend to gloss over that as well with the catch-all “released on conditions” for fear that my readers’ eyes would gloss over if I got too technical.
Again, I’ve never had a defendant complain that I called their undertaking a recognizance or vice versa.
I do feel bad about all the lives I have ruined, though. Oh no, wait, I take that back. It wasn’t me who committed the crimes that landed their names in the newspaper, it was them.
