In what was the most interesting news story of the summer, all of Canada watched as police descended on Gillam, Man., to carry out a days-long manhunt for two young men from Port Alberni, B.C., believed to have committed up to three murders in northern B.C.
And while the conversation on all major media outlets focused around the progress of the manhunt, the families of the victims, and the backgrounds of the two young men on the run, there was a more important conversation that needed to be had. That is about the presumption of innocence.
One of the most important aspects of the justice system is the presumption of innocence. And this has to be safely guarded at all stages of a trial, if and until conviction, in order to prevent the trier of fact from coming to a predetermined conclusion about the evidence or about the guilt of the offenders and compromising trial fairness.
The way the story caught the public’s attention, however, risked compromising that. The story crafted on television, social media and the radio was of a young man, radicalized as a neo-Nazi, who lied to his father and left on a killing spree with a friend. Photographs of one of the accused were released, showing him in Nazi regalia with Nazi paraphernalia. Still images from security footage sprawled across the front pages of newspapers and news websites, showing two men with slight smiles and seemingly dead eyes.
Read the full article that Kyla wrote here.