Lisa Banfield: criminal charges v discretion, compassion, common sense

Let’s start with this scenario. A woman with a decades-long history of having been brutalized and controlled by her common-law partner — a history that was known or should have been known to the police — is coerced into helping her partner transport ammunition for his cache of largely illegally obtained weapons. Does the RCMP […]

Did the Mounties charge Lisa Banfield to distract from their own failures? Probably

There are still too many unanswered questions about what prompted the RCMP to charge Lisa Banfield, the common-law spouse of the Nova Scotia mass killer, for supplying him with ammunition a month before the deadly rampage. That’s one reason why Banfield’s decision to sue the federal and provincial governments for “malicious prosecution” — she says […]

Lisa Banfield and the search for ‘truth’

Cross-examination isn’t the only valid — or always best — truth-seeking method of testing evidence. And, in light of last week’s controversy over Lisa Banfield’s appearance before the mass casualty commission, it’s worth asking whether the truth was all that was being sought. “We keep getting confronted by people who seem to have a perception […]