Charter Helps Dope Dealers - Again

Another idiot Judge has struck another blow (so to speak) against common sense ever showing its face in the criminal justice system.

Justice Ellen Gordon has ruled that border guards who detained a truck driver and found 50 kilo of cocaine stashed away violated the poor baby's Charter Rights.

Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.

Here's my idea.

Border guards should have memo pads of search warrants at the ready.

Rip one of the top, sign it and hand it to the sucker. "Here's your effing search warrant, you low-life scum. Now, let's get busy tearing your vehicle apart so we can find all the contraband. Especially the contraband that, being of an illegal and addictive nature, leads to waves of home and business invasions."

The driver in this particular case is apparently a Canadian "citizen." This, of course, beggars the definition of citizenship.

The Justice should be ridden out of town on a rail as absolutely soon as possible. Clearly, she is living in a little Legal Cesspool, unexposed the the sunlight and the realities of her times.

Following, for the stout of heart, is the full story:

"Border search violated accused smuggler's rights, judge rules
Catherine Rolfsen, CanWest News Service
Published: Monday, July 16, 2007
In a ruling that cuts to the heart of how Canadian border guards do their jobs, a Provincial Court judge has ruled that the rights of a man charged with smuggling 50 kilograms of cocaine into the country were violated when he was searched at the border. Justice Ellen Gordon ruled Friday that border officers - who routinely question travellers and search their vehicles - violated three sections of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms when they interrogated Ajitpal Singh Sekhon and dismantled the truck he was driving without a search warrant.The ruling means the drugs seized must be excluded from the evidence against Sekhon.Federal prosecutors have already filed an appeal.According to Gordon's reasons for judgment, Sekhon, a Canadian citizen, tried to enter Canada via the Aldergrove border crossing on Jan. 25, 2005. The border guard decided Sekhon was suspiciously tense and sent him to be questioned in the customs office, where he was locked inside while another inspector searched the truck. With the help of a drug-sniffing dog, the ruling says, guards found a false compartment below the truck bed, at which point Sekhon was informed that he would be detained and that he had the right to legal counsel. However, Gordon concluded that Sekhon had been detained from the moment he was locked inside the office, violating sections 9 and 10 of the Charter, which prohibit arbitrary detention and guarantee the right to a lawyer. Gordon's judgment says inspectors eventually dismantled the vehicle to find 50 bricks of cocaine. But the most important part of the ruling is Gordon's conclusion that guards violated section 8 of the Charter - freedom from unreasonable search or seizure - since they never applied for a search warrant.The Crown lawyer pointed out that the Customs Act routinely allows such searches without a warrant based on reasonable grounds for suspicion.The two border inspectors involved said they had never applied for - or even conceived of applying for - a search warrant in their careers. But the judge wrote that officers followed a "lucky hunch," not reasonable suspicions, in launching their search. But she said the key to the ruling was that the customs act includes provisions for a search warrant, and there was no reason they couldn't have applied for one. "In such circumstances it was incumbent upon the investigators to seek the judicial authorization of a search warrant. They did not," Gordon wrote.Sekhar's lawyer Lawrence Myers said the ruling is ground-breaking. "It's the first decision that I'm aware of that defines individual rights in conjunction with the Customs Act since 9/11," Myers said.If Gordon's decision is upheld by a senior court, it could serve as a precedent for how border searches are carried out. Myers said he doesn't think it's an unreasonable impediment to require border guards to obtain a search warrant before searching a vehicle."