Canadian Bar Review: Special Issue on the R v Stanley Trial

The most recent issue of the Canadian Bar Review is available online. It is the bilingual peer-reviewed legal journal of the Canadian Bar Association.

The issue features a number of articles on the R. v. Stanley trial.

Gerald  Stanley, a white Saskatchewan farmer, was acquitted in a case where he had been charged with second degree murder and manslaughter in the death of an Indigenous man, Colton Boushie. 

In the summer of 2016, Stanley had shot and killed Boushie after he and friends entered the farmer's property.

The Crown argued that Stanley deliberately pointed the gun and pulled the trigger, intending to kill Boushie. Stanley testified that he believed his gun was empty when he approached Boushie, and that the  lethal bullet had discharged by accident.

The acquittal raised a huge controversy, among others reasons because Stanley's lawyers had used  peremptory challenges to exclude all visibly Indigenous people from the  jury that acquitted him. 

Many other questions were raised by commentators about longstanding racial bias in the justice system and the handling of forensic evidence by police in the case.