........[he] pointed out the skill and art of the orator—how everything important to his purpose was said at the exact moment when he had brought the minds of his audience into the state most fitted to receive it; how he made steal into their minds, gradually and by insinuation, thoughts which, if expressed in a more direct manner would have aroused their opposition. From the Autobiography of John Stuart Mill

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0841820900002794

Hate Promotion and Freedom of Expression: Truth and Consequences

Wrongful convictions remain an understudied problem in Canada. With the advent of recent technological advances in the form of forensic DNA analysis, newsprint media agencies have served as a medium for questioning the fallibility of the criminal justice system while raising public awareness of erroneous convictions. The social constructionist theoretical perspective provides the foundational underpinnings of a qualitative content analysis surrounding the print-news coverage of three Canadian wrongful conviction cases: David Milgaard, Guy Paul Morin and Gregory Parsons. Findings indicate disparity in the amount, extent, nature and content of coverage amongst wrongful conviction cases and between national and local coverage. The data suggests that for an individual to conclusively establish factual innocence, DNA technology must not only exonerate the wrongfully convicted individual but must also implicate the 'real' perpetrator. These results suggest the newsprint media is perpetuating a 'hierarchy of wrongful convictions' based on an individual's ability to conclusively establish their factual innocence through the utilization offorensic DNA analysis. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. vi

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Reliance on science: An examination of the newsprint media's construction of DNA technology regarding innocence and wrongful conviction

In jurisdictions where there is no constitutional guarantee of the presumption of innocence, this axiom of the criminal law can be disregarded at the whim of the legislature or the courts. In Canada, however, where the right of the accused persons to be presumed innocent until proven guilty has been entrenched by section 11(d) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, any infringement of the presumptions must pass the stringent test of justification set forth in section 1 of the Charter. This article looks at the scope of the presumption of innocence and highlights some major areas of Canadian criminal law where breaches of the presumption occur despite the lack of any justification for such breaches, either on broad principles or under the strictures set forth by the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Oakes.

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Richard Mahoney

Papers

The Presumption of Innocence: A New Era