What offences are punishable by death in Canada in 2022? Summary It is possible to charge with, convict of, and sentence for serious offences at any time, even 120 years later. The punishment is determined by checking the punishment at two points in time: at the time of commission, and at the time of sentencing. The lesser punishment applies. However, after expiry or repeal of a law, the punishment is not considered to have been reduced to zero but is instead the same penalty as immediately before expiry or repeal. The penalty for murder, treason, and piracy was lowered to life imprisonment, so sentences in 2022 for those crimes, even if committed in the past, cannot result in a death sentence, since section 11(i) of the Charter would reduce the penalty. The same applies to various military offences whose punishments were reduced from death to life imprisonment. Sentencing in 2022 for older crimes might result in a death sentence. What are those crimes that could result in a death sentence, or are there none? No limitation There is no statute of limitations on hybrid and indictable offences, so people can be charged with hybrid and indictable offences at any time. This means an accused can be charged with and found guilty of offences committed 120 years ago. However, summary offences must be charged within 12 months after they are committed. Punishment In Canada, anyone can be charged with, convicted of, and sentenced for an offence committed in the past if it was an actual offence at the time of commission, even after expiry or repeal of the law for that offence. The offence for the charge does not need to be an offence at the time of charge, conviction, or sentencing, as long as it was an offence at the time of commission. A person can still be charged with a repealed offence as long as the offence is in existence at the time that the offence was committed. http://criminalnotebook.ca/index.php/Repealed_Offences Under Section 11(i) of the Charter, &quot;Any person charged with an offence has the right: if found guilty of the offence and if the punishment for the offence has been varied between the time of commission and the time of sentencing, to the benefit of the lesser punishment.&quot; However, if something was previously an offence, but it later became no longer an offence, then the punishment was not &quot;varied&quot; and the punishment still applies to those convicted before it stopped being an offence. For example, if X is an offence on 2000-01-01 but no longer an offence on 2000-01-02, then &quot;X on 2000-01-01&quot; is an offence subject to the penalty if convicted on 2001-01-03, but &quot;X on 2000-01-02&quot; is not an offence. The penalty immediately before the repeal would be the penalty at the time of sentencing for the purpose of section 11(i) of the Charter specifying lesser punishment, under the Interpretation Act: 43 Where an enactment is repealed in whole or in part, the repeal does not […] (d) affect any offence committed against or contravention of the provisions of the enactment so repealed, or any punishment, penalty or forfeiture incurred under the enactment so repealed, or (e) affect any investigation, legal proceeding or remedy in respect of any right, privilege, obligation or liability referred to in paragraph (c) or in respect of any punishment, penalty or forfeiture referred to in paragraph (d), and an investigation, legal proceeding or remedy as described in paragraph (e) may be instituted, continued or enforced, and the punishment, penalty or forfeiture may be imposed as if the enactment had not been so repealed. As an example, on 2018-12-11, someone was charged with &quot;pretending to practise witchcraft&quot; under section 365(b) of the Criminal Code, even though it was repealed two days later on 2018-12-13, and conviction and sentencing were still possible when the article was published on 2018-12-19. Timmins police charged 33-year-old Tiffany Butch on Dec. 11, accusing her of demanding money in return for lifting a curse. Two days later, Section 365 of the Criminal Code — which prohibits &quot;pretending to practise witchcraft&quot; — was formally repealed. It's likely that Butch, who goes by the nickname &quot;White Witch of the North,&quot; will be the last person in Canada to be charged, and potentially tried, for the offence. Marc Depatie, a spokesperson for the Timmins force, said police and prosecutors work with the laws that are on the books at the time of the alleged offence, pointing to historical sexual offences as an example. &quot;That's why police and the Crown attorneys keep ancient, or aged, versions of the Criminal Code on hand, to see what laws apply,&quot; he said. Depatie said the fact that the offence was about to be scrubbed from the Criminal Code was not a factor in the decision to lay the charge. Elements of the case were &quot;best captured&quot; by that section of the Criminal Code in consultation with the local Crown attorney's office, he said. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/witchcraft-criminal-code-charge-1.4951071 In these types of fraud cases, if the accused pays restitution, they would drop the charges, which is the outcome of that case when the Crown withdrew charges on 2019-03-26. However, if they pressed for charges and a conviction occurred later, a sentence would be based on the lesser of the penalty at the time of commission and time of sentencing, which would be up to imprisonment of 2 years less one day plus a fine of not more than $5,000. Even though section 365(b) would have been repealed at the time of sentencing, the punishment would still apply. The article correctly says she was &quot;likely&quot; to be the last person charged and potentially tried, since later charges under this section were possible until 2019-12-12, 12 months after a possible charge for that offence committed on 2018-12-12. In the case of a conviction for &quot;having sexual relations with a stepdaughter in violation of paragraph 153(1)(a) of the Criminal Code (now repealed)&quot; repealed at the time of sentencing (the section was also renumbered to 158, implying the offence was committed between 1970 and 1985), the court does not consider a repeal as the punishment being &quot;varied&quot; to zero: The Court of Appeal also rejected the argument of there being a section 11(i) benefit due to the punishment having been, in effect, reduced to zero by the previous offence having been repealed […] Section 11(i) does not afford the right to any “lesser punishment” that was temporarily available in the time between the commission of the offence and sentencing for that offence. Thus, in cases where an offence was committed before a lesser punishment became available, and where sentencing occurred after that lesser punishment was eliminated, the offender would not have the benefit of the lesser punishment available in the interim period. Rather, section 11(i) provides a binary right, granting only the lesser of two punishments: that on the date of the offence and that on the date of sentencing (Poulin, supra). https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/check/art11i.html If sentencing occurs after repeal or expiry of an offence, the punishment still applies. The punishment at the time of sentencing, for the purpose of section 11(i), would be the punishment immediately before the repeal or expiry (see section 43 of Interpretation Act cited above). Abolition of death penalty offences committed later The penalty for murder, treason, and piracy was lowered to life imprisonment effective 1976-07-26, and the penalty for various military offences was lowered to life imprisonment effective 1999-09-01. Anyone convicted of these offences today would suffer life imprisonment instead of death, so these offences are no longer punishable by death, even if they were committed before 1976. In Criminal Law Amendment Act (No. 2), 1976, they also explicitly commute all death sentences for three particular offences: [(4) is omitted because it is similar to (2)] 25 (1) If, on the day this Act comes into force, any person is under a sentence of death for murder punishable by death that has not been commuted, that sentence thereupon becomes a sentence of imprisonment for life for first degree murder without eligibility for parole until he has served twenty-five years of his sentence. (2) If, after the coming into force of this Act, an appeal against conviction by a person under a sentence of death upon the coming into force of this Act for murder punishable by death is dismissed, that sentence thereupon becomes a sentence of imprisonment for life for first degree murder without eligibility for parole until he has served twenty-five years of his sentence. (3) If, on the day this Act comes into force, any person is under sentence of death for treason or piracy that has not been commuted, that sentence is deemed to have been commuted to imprisonment for life with like effect as if the commutation had been granted before the day this Act came into force. They commute death sentences only for murder, treason, and piracy, so other older offences could still be punishable by death. Death penalty not &quot;cruel and unusual&quot; The Supreme Court found that the death penalty and even mandatory death penalty are not &quot;cruel and unusual treatment or punishment&quot; under section 2(b) of the Bill of Rights (Miller et al. v. The Queen, [1977] 2 S.C.R. 680). However, the lesser punishment of life imprisonment without parole was recently found to be &quot;cruel&quot; punsishment (R. v. Bissonnette, 2022 SCC 23). Would this judgement have any effect on death penalty sentencing in 2022? Or would it have no effect, because life imprisonment without parole is different from death (and somehow a punishment could be &quot;cruel&quot; but lesser than a punishment that is not &quot;cruel&quot;), or because it would be retroactive? Main Question If there is some capital offence from a long time ago that is no longer an offence, without any reduction to its punishment, and someone in 2022 is convicted of committing that offence while it was still an offence, then it would be punishable by the death penalty. For example, if Y was an offence with death specified as the minimum punishment, but then it was repealed effective 1921-01-01 with death still specified as the minimum punishment when it was repealed, then someone convicted in 2022 of &quot;Y on 1920-12-31&quot; would be necessarily sentenced to death. Similarly, if an offence specified death as the maximum punishment, then someone convicted of it would be possibly sentenced to death. Do these offences exist, and if so, what are they? (even though the federal cabinet would probably commute a death sentence in 2022) It would be hypocritical for Canada to characterize itself as a country opposed to capital punishment by refusing extradition when the possibility of death penalty would &quot;shock the conscience&quot;, while simutaneously subjecting those under its jurisdiction to liability of death penalty for ancient, repealed/expired offences. Is there anything preventing this, such as a lack of applicable offences?
Do these offences exist,... None exist for civilian offences since 1976 and for miltary offences since 1999. All death penalties have been lowered to life imprisonment and for any conviction after that point in time only the lower punishment would apply. Since 1963, all convictions where the death penalty did apply, were commuted to life imprisonment. So there are no cases open where the death penalty would still apply. You cannot be convicted for a crime that no longer exists (repealed). You cannot be sentenced to a punishment that no longer applies (lowered). Nulla poena sine lege (no penalty without law) - Wikipedia After the Confederation period (1867), the number of offences punishable by death were reduced to three: murder, rape, and treason. The last execution took place on the 1962-12-11. After that all death sentences were commuted as a matter of policy. The abolition of the death penalty for murder, treason, and piracy came into force on the 1976-07-26. Other military offences (cowardice, desertion, unlawful surrender, and spying for the enemy), if committed traitorously, still existed until September 1999 (the last one was carried out in 1945). Capital punishment in Canada - Wikipedia The death penalty was de facto abolished in Canada in January 1963 and de jure in September 1999.
No, section 11 only applies to criminal offences and quasi-criminal offences with criminal proceedings. See Guindon v. Canada 2015 SCC 41 (Wikipedia, full text) esp. at para. 64.
The penalty in this case What, for example, is the penalty for what this person is accused of doing? This (or at least an upper limit) is given in the very article you cite: At the time of his arrest the Vatican said that if convicted he could face up to 12 years in jail. There's your answer to that question. The laws of the Vatican - and a good reference I don't want to embark on a complete explanation of the way laws work in the Vatican City, but I have found a &quot;good reference&quot;. In a nutshell, The VCS came into existence as a sovereign nation in 1929 with the signing of the Lateran Treaty between the Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy. The signing effectively ended the “Roman Question,” the decades old tension between the Catholic Church and the nation of Italy. Prior to the treaty, the relationship between the Church and the country was governed by the Law of Papal Guarantees, an Italian law that allowed the Pope a certain amount of autonomy within the borders of Italy. The Lateran Treaty consisted of three separate documents spread over twenty-seven articles and four annexes: an agreement acknowledging the Vatican as an independent state, also known as the Treaty of Conciliation; a concordat on church state relations between the city state and Italy; and a financial convention liquidating the financial claims of the Holy See against Italy. In signing the treaty, Italy ceded 108.7 acres of Rome to the Holy See, thus creating the world’s smallest sovereign nation. At the signing, Pope Pius XI was represented by Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, papal secretary of state, while King Emanuel III was represented by Benito Mussolini, prime minister of Italy. The Lateran Treaty was incorporated into the Italian Constitution sixteen years later in 1947. . . . On the same day that the Lateran Treaty was signed, the VCS adopted a constitution in the form of six constitutional (or fundamental) laws: Fundamental Law of the City of the Vatican; Law of the Source of Laws; Law on the Rights of Citizenship and Sojourn; Law on Administrative Organization; Law on Economic, Commercial, and Professional Organization; and Law of Public Security. Under the second of these laws, the sources of VCS law were comprised of the Codex Iuris Canonici (Canon Law Code), and “[t]he laws promulgated for the City of the Vatican by the Sovereign Pontiff or by any other authority delegated by him, as well as the regulations lawfully issued by the competent authority.” Article 3 of this law also allowed for the use of Italian law as well as provincial and municipal Roman law when they did not conflict with canon law, the rules of the Lateran Treaty (and, later, the 1984 Concordat), or divine law. The role of the Pope The VCS is a unique entity in that the state’s monarch is also the spiritual leader of the Roman Catholic Church throughout the world. As the elected absolute temporal monarch of the state, the Pope has full legislative, executive, and judicial authority over the jurisdiction. The Pope delegates most of this authority to a variety of organs within the Vatican City, all of whose members may be appointed or removed at the discretion of the Pope. The powers and duties of these various organs are described in detail later in this article. In other words, everybody answers to the Pope. He may not oversee this particular case, but he theoretically could. More specifically, though, The judicial system of the VCS is organized as follows: a sole judge (Giudice Unico) presiding over a court of limited jurisdiction; a three-judge Tribunal (Tribunale); a four-member Court of Appeals (Corte d’Appello); and, finally, the Supreme Court of Appeals (Corte di Cassazione). It is important to distinguish these judicial organs from those of the Roman Curia, which is the administrative arm of the Holy See. Cases from temporal VCS courts are not generally reported, but a listing of the types of cases tried before each of the courts is published in L’Attivita della Santa Sede, the annual yearbook.
First, I need to correct a misconception you seem to have. The length of time you spend in jail does not normally determine if something is a felony or a misdemeanor. Whether something is a felony or a misdemeanor is based on how you're charged. And it's not like you happen to be charged with something with a maximum sentence of 365 or 366 days; if you are being charged with a felony, it's because the decision was made that your alleged crime was serious and should be treated as a felony. If you're being charged with a misdemeanor, ditto. Prosecutors charge knowing the difference between the two. The distinction was not originally &quot;punishable by more than a year in prison&quot; vs. &quot;punishable by at most a year.&quot; In fact, it originated well before the idea that the default punishment for most crimes is confinement for a term, where the term is dependent on the severity of the crime. The original distinction was about forfeiture. A felony was a violation of a feudal relationship between a lord and a vassal; if a vassal violates their duty of loyalty to their lord, their relationship ends and their property is forfeit to that lord. Not all serious crimes were felonies. Murder was normally not a felony, because it didn't violate that duty of loyalty. Later on (post-Normans), murder and other serious crimes did result in forfeiture. The term broadened to include these crimes; at this point, &quot;felony&quot; meant &quot;this crime results in your property being forfeit.&quot; These were also the most severe crimes. This is the point where &quot;felony&quot; meaning &quot;exceptionally severe crime&quot; really became established. However, the technical distinction based on forfeiture became muddied, because of another punishment that almost always went along with it: execution. Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, complained that people are mixing these two up. The meaning generally shifted to &quot;crimes which were punished by death,&quot; but scholars did know that the proper meaning should really be &quot;crimes punished with forfeiture.&quot; The distinction mattered. Because felonies were so serious, the procedure involved differed in several respects. I happen to know you're in the US and my main source is also about the US, so let's hop across the Atlantic Ocean to the colonies. Here, forfeiture was pretty much unknown around the time of independence. The popular understanding of &quot;felony&quot; was still &quot;capital crime;&quot; the legal understanding tended to be &quot;the common-law felonies plus things the legislature designated as a felony.&quot; Nearer the end of the 18th century, the number of crimes punishable by death dropped substantially in the US. The default punishment for most serious crimes shifted from execution to confinement in a prison (this is when prison became the default sentence for even very serious crimes in the US). These new prisons were very different from the older jails: they were designed to reform their inmates, and turn them into productive members of society. But not all crimes need that; with less serious crimes, you don't have to go about fixing a character flaw, you just have to show to the criminal that doing this bad thing results in this punishment. The lack of a firm definition of felony became a serious problem shortly after this change. Originally in the US, things worked basically like in England. Legislatures passed laws, which might refer to older laws by name, but there was no organizing principle. Lots of the criminal law was bound up in precedent. It was extremely difficult to find out for sure what the law even was. Instead, there was a major push to codify the law. That means you would have a code, which contained, in organized form, all the laws relating to crime. One of the earliest and most influential American penal codes was actually never adopted. It was written by Edward Livingstone for Louisiana, and was intended to wholly supplant the common law (Louisiana would be the perfect state for this, because it still has a civil law tradition). Livingston didn't use the term &quot;felony,&quot; but did distinguish between &quot;crimes&quot; and &quot;misdemeanors.&quot; The main systematic difference was not in the penal code itself (the punishments were set out on a crime-by-crime basis), but in the corrections code. Crimes were punished in a penitentiary designed to reform the prisoner; misdemeanors were punished by simple imprisonment. Crimes were all punished by more than a year, while misdemeanors could be punished by anywhere from a few days to two years. The important thing was where and how you were punished, not for how long. While this code was never adopted, it had a major influence on the New York code of 1829. The New York code was designed to rationalize the law, but not do too much in the way of substantive changes. In particular, the old idea of a &quot;felony&quot; was not abolished; it was preserved, with real significance (part of the point of keeping the term was that they didn't want to lose all its baggage), and so it needed a definition. They basically adopted Livingstone's definition. Felonies were always the more serious crimes; since serious crimes were now evidence of character flaws to be reformed in a penitentiary, the crimes where you got sent for reform were the felonies (plus, of course, those punished by death). All others were misdemeanors. They also decided that punishment for more than a year, in a jail that's not designed to reform you, was bad; no jail sentence could be more than a year. Since confinement continues to be the main form of punishment, this definition has managed to stick without issue. The forfeiture and capital punishment definitions became obsolete as those punishments became completely obsolete or very, very limited in use. That's pretty much how things got where they are now. It makes some amount of sense to distinguish between bad crimes and not-so-bad crimes, without needing to list out the bad crimes. This is not actually unique to English law; the French penal code also makes this distinction. The term survived the feudal context in which it originated because it was useful. As confinement became the main type of punishment, and as (at the same time) confinement for serious crimes was paired with efforts to reform and rehabilitate criminals, the old distinction shifted to distinguishing between things where you needed that reform and things where you just needed punishment. Then, it shifted in some places to being about the length of said punishment, as an alternative way of expressing the same basic idea but which could be more easily applied to varying systems. Main source: Will Tress, Unintended Collateral Consequences: Defining Felony in the Early American Republic, 57 Clev. St. L. Rev. 461 (2009)
also, what is &quot;cannot be punished on account thereof because they lacked criminal responsibility due to the intoxication or if this cannot be ruled out&quot;? I can not understand This means that if a person, while drunk, does soemthign that would otherwise be a crime, but the person cannot be charged because s/he was too drunk to know that s/he was committing a crime, such a person can insted be charged with having become intoxicated, and given up to the same punishment that would have been given for conviction for doign the unlawful act. For example, if a person damaged property while under the influence of alcohol (drunk), it might be impossible under German law to prosecute for the crime of intentionally damaging property, because one could not prove that the person knew what s/he was doing, and knew that it was criminal. In such a case the person could be charged with having intentionally or carelessly become drunk, but the penalty can't be more than the penalty for having damaged property would have been, nor can it be more than five years. As a practical matter, I think it very unlikely that the police would seek to impose a fine if they didn't issue any ticket or other paperwork at the scene, nor mention any such intention. However, they might be legally able to do so.
In the US, a person is generally protected from being tried for the same offense twice, but they are not necessarily absolutely &quot;protected&quot;. If a jury convicts a person but the judge enters a directed verdict of not guilty, the prosecution can appeal that action (Wilson v. US, 420 U.S. 332). The reason is that the acquittal could be disposed of on appeal without subjecting the person to a second trial. In contrast, in Fong Foo v. US, 369 U.S. 141 the trial judge ordered the jury to enter a verdict of acquittal. The appeals court rejected the judges basis for ordering an acquittal: but Fong Foo was &quot;protected&quot; because there could not be a second trial (double jeopardy), and it does not follow that the jury would have convicted but for the judge's order. The question reduces to the limited circumstances under which the prosecution can appeal a verdict. For instance, the prosecution can appeal a tre-trial motion to dismiss, and since there was no trial, there is no second jeopardy. Within a single jurisdiction, the only circumstance allowing a second trial involves bribery of a judge (Aleman v. Judges of the Circuit Court of Cook County, 138 F.3d 302), where the basis for allowing a second trial is that defendant was not in jeopardy with the first trial. New evidence does not override a defendant's protection against a second trial, whether it is new DNA evidence or a confession. It does not matter if this evidence arises seconds after the final verdict is entered, or months after. Or even before, but the prosecution was unaware.
Charged? Of course, the police can charge you with anything at any time Could you be convicted? Maybe. Their best shot is charging you with “Manslaughter by an unlawful and dangerous act” also called constructive manslaughter. The Crown must prove your act: was intentional, was unlawful, leads the reasonable person to realise that some other person is at risk of physical harm, and caused the death. The first two are uncontestable: the protesters are deliberately engaging in an illegal act. No 3 would be up to the jury. No 4 is also up to the jury and would turn on the evidence that the delay to the ambulance caused the death.
Is the government exempt from anti discrimination legislation Broadly speaking, the government (in Canada, the executive power vested in Her Majesty the Queen) is not subject to any law unless the legislature binds the Crown explicitly. In this case, Ontario Human Rights Code does bind the government and any agency of the Crown. However, Canada is a federal country, and for certain areas exclusively regulated by the federal government, provincial laws may not apply fully. This is the case for human rights and employment laws; the federal government along with federally regulated industries (banking, telecommunications, airlines etc.) enjoy immunity from provincial human rights codes. But they are still subject to the federal Canada Human Rights Act (which only apply to businesses under the federal jurisdiction), which also prohibit age discrimination. Additionally, government actions are also subject to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, section 15 of which prohibits discrimination based on age. what is with the huge number of jobs that list &quot;Must be eligible to participate in the Canada Summer Jobs (CSJ) program&quot; as a requirement (with &lt;30 being the top listed requirement). For example, the Canada Summer Jobs (CSJ) program you referred to in the question is a federal program within the spending power of the Parliament of Canada and are immune from provincial laws that interfere with its application. Ontario laws simply to no apply in this case (but federal law and the Charter does) even if an action physically happens in Ontario. What Exemptions are there to the Age Discrimination laws in Ontario? Anti-discrimination law in general only prohibits &quot;unreasonable&quot; discriminations. If someone can show that they have &quot;good reason&quot; to discriminate, it can be legal. For example, it is legal for a casting director to choose a black man to portray Martin Luther King Jr. instead of a white woman. It is also legal to discriminate against people with certain disabilities if they are in fact unable to carry out tasks required in a job even with reasonable accommodation. It is also legal for an employer (or for the law to require an employer) to give special leaves to women for pregnancy and childbirth, even though otherwise discrimination is not permitted based on sex. Age-based discounts for example are usually not illegal (and even explicitly legal in Ontario's legislation for senior's discounts) if the purpose is genuine (e.g. less spending power for teens and seniors). While age requirements are on its face a discrimination, youth programs usually qualify as affirmative action programs that are designed to ameliorate the conditions of a disadvantaged group. It is the same basis why certain gender-, race- or age-based scholarships and grants are legal. In the employment context, the government considers youths as a disadvantaged group and improving youth employment is a reasonable government objective. The Charter allows affirmative programs by the government: (2) Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability. and both federal and Ontario human rights legislations allow special programs: 14 (1) A right under Part I is not infringed by the implementation of a special program designed to relieve hardship or economic disadvantage or to assist disadvantaged persons or groups to achieve or attempt to achieve equal opportunity or that is likely to contribute to the elimination of the infringement of rights under Part I. R.S.O. 1990, c. H.19, s. 14 (1). 16 (1) It is not a discriminatory practice for a person to adopt or carry out a special program, plan or arrangement designed to prevent disadvantages that are likely to be suffered by, or to eliminate or reduce disadvantages that are suffered by, any group of individuals when those disadvantages would be based on or related to the prohibited grounds of discrimination, by improving opportunities respecting goods, services, facilities, accommodation or employment in relation to that group. Canadian Human Rights Act