Cases of sex assault, fraud, drug dealing have been stayed, raising questions about administration of justice…
When police turned up at Melanie Hatton’s home in Kelowna, B.C., in November 2021, she says they found her in the bathroom covered in blood, with her then-husband Jeffrey Maclean standing over her “in an aggressive manner.”
She describes a gruesome scene in a court filing, with blood from her head wound allegedly smeared on Maclean’s mouth from his whispering in her ear. The filing in a civil lawsuit against Maclean says he told a 911 operator his wife was “bleeding like a pig.”
Hatton said police and prosecutors told her the criminal case against Maclean in B.C. Supreme Court would be a “slam dunk,” and he was charged with assault causing bodily harm and resisting arrest.
But the case was thrown out in August 2023 — not for a lack of evidence, but because the Crown took too long to bring it to trial under a set of strict timelines that have reshaped the way criminal cases are handled since a landmark 2016 ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada.
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Vancouver defence lawyer Kyla Lee, who specializes in impaired driving cases, said Jordan has had a “huge negative impact on not just my practice, but the practice of law generally for criminal lawyers.”
“The problem is that now every time you go to court, no matter what the purpose of the appearance is, there is always a discussion about Jordan,” she said. “It comes up at every single appearance and it’s gotten to the point where the ceilings in Jordan are effectively being weaponized against accused individuals.”
With a busy schedule, finding court dates that work for both her and prosecutors is challenging, and the inability to agree results in arguments over who’s to blame. Judges have to conduct “microscopic analysis” to determine the length and cause of trial delays, Lee said.
“It has made everything far more complex, far more contentious, and it’s really done a disservice to the timely administration of justice because more court time is being taken up simply to address these issues,” she said.