Two Vancouver provincial court judges have expressed concern about delayed reports needed for sentencing after guilty pleas — situations that have left family members on both sides of cases awaiting closure.
There's also a Burnaby charge, a case that is 587 days old. Guilty pleas are recorded there too for possession of a firearm without a license and/or registration. “I’m going to look into your matter,” Milne told Bell. “We don’t know when this legal reviewer is going to get around to reviewing it.”Amanda Carling, a lawyer and acting council executive director, said the Bell report was requested July 8.It was assigned to a writer on Sept. 12 with a deadline for the report to go to legal review of Oct. 31, 2022. The deadline to complete the legal review was Nov. 4, 2022, but the final report was not uploaded the next day.The second judge On Oct.
Defence lawyer Kevin Westell told St. Pierre he hadn’t seen the report yet. He described the delay as part of the general inaccessibility of such reports provincewide. She said the highest number legal aid did was 250 a year while the council is getting one request per day. As of Nov. 8, she said, the council has reduced the time it takes to assign a report to a writer to one to two weeks.
“Crown counsel have an important role to play in informing the judge of the relevant circumstances and law, and in advancing a Crown sentencing position that addresses the fundamental purpose and principles of sentencing,” McLaughlin said. And, the ministry assured, probation officers understand and respect the expectations to meet the requirements of the courts, and as a matter of practice will advise the court in advance on occasions when a delay may be unavoidable.
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