Safety First: Laboratory Safety and the Criminal Code

A Scientific American article on the safety of academic laboratories recently caught my eye. The article entitled Are University Labs Criminally Dangerous? revealed a systemic weakness in the safety standards on campus labs resulting in some serious and at times fatal lab incidents.

One such incident in 2008 killed She­harbano “Sheri” Sangji, a 23 year-old lab research assistant at UCLA. Sheri died eighteen days after chemicals she was working with burst into flames and spread to her clothing. She was not wearing a protective lab coat as required by safety code regulations.

Now felony charges have been laid against the U.C.L.A. chemistry professor in charge of the lab, Patrick Harran, and the Regents of the University of California for criminally breaching lab safety codes under the occupational health and safety code. Harran, if convicted, faces up to 4.5 years imprisonment.

UCLA vigorously denied any criminal responsibility calling the charges “outrageous.” In the statement released by UCLA after the charges were laid, the University questioned the “truly baffling” charges, which were inconsistent with the University’s co-operation in an “exhaustive” safety investigation, the subsequent finding there was no “willful violations” by UCLA, and the fining of the University under regulatory offences. The University was fined $31,000 by the California Division of Occupational Health and Safety in 2009 as Sangji was not properly trained, had not been provided with protective clothing, and had not addressed “deficiencies noted in an internal safety inspection two months before the fatal fire in Harran’s organic chemistry lab, including a finding that workers were not wearing lab coats.”

The arraignments on the charges have been delayed until March 7, 2012.

Universities in Canada implement their own lab regulations, which tend to require even higher safety standards than the already strict lab safety guidelines. Safety training is even an integral part of school science curriculum. Individual school boards also set safety guidelines.

However, industrial lab accidents are not unknown in Canada, even with a strict regulatory regime. In 2008, approximately two months before the UCLA incident, Roland Daigle, working for the drug manufacturer Sepracor Canada as a lab technician, was exposed to vapours from trimethylsilyl diazomethane while doing a test and subsequently died after his lungs filled up with fluid over an eighteen hour period. Similar to the UCLA offences, the company was charged under the Nova Scotia Occupational Health and Safety Act with “failing to ensure adequate personal protection equipment was in place in Daigle’s work area, failing to ensure that an adequate venting system was in place, failing to ensure he was instructed in the safe use of the chemical, and failing to ensure that no person would disturb the scene of an accident after it occurred.” In a May 2011 plea negotiation, Sepracor pleaded guilty to one charge of failing to provide ventilation and was fined $45,000. The Daigle Family publically denounced the plea negotiation as a “slap on the wrist.”

Of course, the Sepracor incident was dealt with under the provincial regulatory framework and such offences, being public welfare offences and not criminal, do not typically attract serious sanctions. The maximum punishment under the Nova Scotia OHSA is a fine of not more than $250,000 and/or imprisonment not exceeding two years.

However, 2004 amendments to the Criminal Code created under s. 217.1 a legal duty to for “Every one who undertakes, or has the authority, to direct how another person does work or performs a task is under a legal duty to take reasonable steps to prevent bodily harm to that person, or any other person, arising from that work or task."

Such a legal duty can underpin a criminal code charge, which requires as an element of the offence a failure of an accused to act where there is a legal duty to do so. Thus, a corporation or manager may be charged under s. 219(1)(b) of the Criminal Code with criminal negligence by “omitting to do anything that it is his (legal) duty to do” and “shows wanton or reckless disregard for the lives or safety of other persons.” To date, only two employers have been convicted under this new workplace duty.

The question whether regulatory behaviour should be criminalized has been much debated. On one hand are the facts of each particular case such as the deaths of Roland Daigle and Sheri Sangji. On the other hand are deeply held fundamental principles of our criminal law, which cannot and should not be lightly set aside. I will leave this fascinating, yet complex discussion for another posting, but what is clear, as seen by the Canadian and American cases, is that our workplaces can be “criminally dangerous.”

The Trial Judge Deserves Deference!

Oftentimes a Supreme Court of Canada decision can be, at first glance, unimportant, particularly when the decision is brief. This can happen when the Court readily agrees with the lower Court decision, either the majority or even the dissent, and does not feel the need to add to the already cogent written decision. Sometimes, these one-liners by the SCC, fly under the radar and are not recognized as impactful decisions.

Such was seemingly the case in a recent decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. T.L.M. released on February 14, 2012. The case, heard by a panel of seven justices as opposed to the full court complement of nine, was an appeal from the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador - Court of Appeal. In a pithy yet brief decision, Madame Justice Deschamps stated:

We agree with Hoegg J.A., dissenting at the Court of Appeal, that the trial judge committed no reviewable error. Therefore, the appeal is allowed.

This innocuous manner of overturning a lower Court decision belies the true nature of the case as revealed by a closer reading of the lower Court decision. Indeed, through the lower court decision, T.L.M. takes on a more complex meaning and sheds light on another decision of the SCC, the D.A.I. case, released only four days previously.

The D.A.I. case is of huge national importance pronouncing on the capacity of adults with mental disabilities to testify at trial under s.16 of the Canada Evidence Act. Section 16 outlines the procedure to be adopted when an adult witness’s mental capacity to testify is challenged at trial. If the witness does not understand the nature of an oath or a solemn affirmation and cannot communicate the evidence, the witness cannot then testify. If however, the challenged witness does not understand the nature of an oath but can communicate his evidence, he may testify upon promising to tell the truth in accordance with s. 16(3). In the D.A.I. case the trial judge upon entering into an inquiry as required by s.16 found the 23 year-old witness, who had a mental capacity of a three to six year old, could not testify as she did not understand the duty to speak the truth.

The majority of the SCC, speaking through Chief Justice McLachlin, found the trial judge erred in her application of s.16 by requiring the witness to understand the meaning of telling the truth before being permitted to testify. Section 16(3) merely required the witness to be able to communicate the evidence as a prerequisite to testifying. Once this was fulfilled, the witness could then testify upon promising to tell the truth. There was no need for the trial judge to determine whether or not the witness understood what such a promise entailed. Thus, Chief Justice McLachlin’s decision gave this second part of the s. 16(3) determination, the promise to tell the truth, a broad and generous interpretation consistent with the public policy of the “need to bring to justice those who sexually abuse people of limited mental capacity — a vulnerable group all too easily exploited.”

The connection between these two cases, T.L.M. and D.A.I., is found in the appellate principle of deference, referred to in both decisions, but more specifically, as referred to by Justice Binnie and Chief Justice McLachlin.

The main issue in the T.L.M. appeal, as discussed in the lower Court decision, related to the admission of similar fact evidence in a trial involving sexual offences against a child. The similar fact evidence was of another sexual offence against a child, which occurred at the time of the offences before the court. The main issue was credibility, with the accused, the child’s uncle, denying the offence. The similar fact evidence, which was admitted by the trial judge, was relied upon in disbelieving the accused and convicting him of all charges.

The majority of the Newfoundland appellate court found the trial judge erred in his application of the legal test for admissibility of similar fact evidence. To come to this decision, the majority relied upon the principles for admission as enunciated by Justice Binnie in the SCC decision of R. v. Handy. The dissent of Mr. Justice Hoegg disagreed with the majority and found the trial judge made no legal error in admitting the similar fact evidence. Justice Hoegg also relied on Binnie J.’s decision in Handy and made especial reference to Justice Binnie's comments on the “substantial deference” to be given to the trial judge’s decision on admission of similar fact evidence. It is Hoegg’s dissent, which the SCC accepts in allowing the appeal. neither Justice Binnie nor Chief Justice McLachlin sat on the appeal.

Chief Justice McLachlin, in D.I.A., also commented on the principle of deference: an appellate principle in which the court reviewing the trial judge’s reasons defers or accepts the trial judge’s decision based on the judge’s superior position having heard and observed the evidence as opposed to the appellate court, which only reads the evidence and arguments in written form. In Chief Justice McLachlin’s opinion, the trial judge’s error was fundamental and therefore no deference should be given to her decision.

Justice Binnie in dissent, and no stranger to the issue of deference as pointed out in the Handy case, disagreed and stated the following:

The majority judgment in the present case repudiates the earlier jurisprudence and the balanced approach it achieved.  It entirely eliminates any inquiry into whether the potential witness has any “conception of any moral obligation to say what is ‘right’”. 

In the result, despite all the talk in our cases of the need to “defer” to trial judges on their assessment of mental capacity, a deference which, in my opinion, is manifestly appropriate, the majority judgment shows no deference to the views of the trial judge whatsoever and orders a new trial.  I am unable to agree.  I therefore dissent.

Justice Binnie’s very strongly worded dissent takes issue with the lack of conviction the majority has with the principle of deference: in other words, the Chief Justice and the other Justices concurring in her decision, do not “walk the walk” when it comes to deference. These incongruous comments on deference by the majority become even more incomprehensible in light of the oft-quoted Marquard case, involving testimonial capacity, in which Chief Justice McLachlin stated:

It has repeatedly been held that a large measure of deference is to be accorded to the trial judge's assessment of a child's capacity to testify.  Meticulous second‑guessing on appeal is to be eschewed.  As Dickson J. (as he then was) put it (at p. 135) in the oft‑cited case of R. v. Bannerman (1966), 48 C.R. 110 (Man. C.A.), aff'd [1966] S.C.R. v, a trial judge's discretion in determining that a child is competent to testify "unless manifestly abused, should not be interfered with."

Justice Binnie relied on McLachlin C.J.’s Marquard decision in his dissent in D.A.I.

In the end, the deference issue may come down to this: appellate courts will give deference more readily when the trial judge admits evidence than when the trial judge finds evidence inadmissible. It appears at least in matters of admissibility the SCC prefers to give deference to the principle of admissibility over exclusion. Although this approach may recognize more readily the public’s desire to have a matter tried, it may do so at the cost of a fair trial.

Crime And Punishment: “Changing Lives Through Literature”

Judge Willmore of the 1^st District Court in Logan, Utah may just have the right idea: impose a meaningful sentence on offenders, which will positively impact their lives and give them an incentive to make the right choices in the future. Judge Willmore does this through rehabilitation through education, when he requires offenders to read and, on occasion write a report on, Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables as part of their sentences.

Les Misérables, Hugo’s tour de force exposes the societal ills of 19^th century France through an intertwining story of lost youth and redemption. It is a story of hope for those who have done wrong in the past and an example of how acts of kindness can turn evil into good. An excellent read for those in trouble and who want to turn their lives around.

Such alternative sentencing options are unusual in a system that prefers deterrence to rehabilitation, yet the idea of using literature to rehabilitate is not a “novel” idea. In Massachusetts, for example, a Judge has the ability to sentence an offender to a special program called “Changing Lives Through Literature.” To be eligible, the offender must consent and must not be a sex offender or convicted of murder. Once ordered to this “treatment by books,” the offender must attend a three-month course, taught by a College level professor, wherein they read up to 6 novels. After completion of the course, the offender discusses the novels with the Judge, the Professor, and the other offenders who are participants. By all accounts, the program has been successful and has peaked the interest of other Districts across the United States. Although, I have found reference to the program starting in Canada, I have not been able to confirm this.

The idea of rehabilitative self-improvement has been used beyond the courtroom as well. The “Books Through Bars” program in California sends “quality reading material to prisoners and encourage creative dialogue on the criminal justice system, thereby educating those living inside and outside of prison walls.” The program itself has expanded to provide publication opportunities to prisoners, prison libraries, and other educative forums.

The Canadian justice system would benefit from such forays into literature as rehabilitation. Certainly the sentencing regime found in the Youth Criminal Justice Act could provide a platform for such unique sentencing programs. Clearly, education goes hand in hand with self-worth, which many offenders are lacking. The therapeutic effects of a “good read” should not be underestimated and need to be explored in an era where traditional sentencing practices seem an incongruous fit with today’s society. Perhaps it will be only a matter of time and, of course funding, before we see the positive effects of “doing time” through reading but in the meantime, read Les Misérables for yourself and enjoy the educative effects of good literature.

Reading The Riot Act

Riots or violent disturbances of the peace are part of the human psyche. As early as 44 B.C., when the Roman mobs attacked the houses of Brutus and Cassius in an angry response to the untimely death of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March, the world has since experienced riots in every era. Riots occur for a multitude of reasons: from student protest as in the 1229 University of Paris students’ strike to revolution as in the Boston Tea Party of 1773 and from the various race riots in the United States throughout the 1900’s to the obscure reason of advant-garde music, when in 1913 the audience in the Paris Théâtre des Champs-Élysées listening to the debut of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring ballet broke out in a violent booing frenzy. There have been riots over various alcoholic beverages as in the London Gin Riots of 1743 or the Beer Riots in Bavaria in 1844 or then only ten years later, the Portland Rum Riot. Sadly, I missed the Champagne Riot in 1911 France. However, increasingly, riots are not about protest but about a lack of sportsmanship or too much sportsmanship as in the case of the recent hockey related riots in Canada.

The Stanley Cup Riots, and I use the plural as there has been more than one (two in Vancouver, five in Montreal, one in Edmonton during playoffs), have been particularly egregious, costing the municipalities millions of dollars in damaged property and even millions more in prosecuting and punishing the participants. The Nika Riot of AD 532 might have been the first sports related riot, happening in the Hippodrome at Constantinople, then the centre of the remaining Roman Empire in the East. The two factions, Blue and Green, were supporting their chosen chariot race teams when both sides demanded the city release Blue and Green prisoners, who had been arrested, earlier, for disturbing the peace. In a moment, this sporting event became political and over the next few days a not unfamiliar scene played out as the Emperor Justinian first apologized and, when the mob was still not pacified, then slaughtered thirty thousand Blue and Greens in the Hippodrome. Ironically, it was Justinian who codified all Imperial laws into the Codex. See my previous posting on the codification of our criminal laws into the Criminal Code.

Although we no longer “read the riot act,” as they no doubt did in 18^th Century England when the Riot Act was first enacted, our criminal law does prohibit “unlawful assemblies and riots” under the Criminal Code. The 1715 Riot Act gave a Justice of the Peace or another person so authorized to disperse “groups of twelve people or more being unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously assembled together, to the disturbance of the publick peace” upon proclaiming:

Our sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George, for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies. God save the King.

If the crowd did not disperse within an hour of this proclamation, the authorities had the right to “seize and apprehend” the rabble-rousers who would be subject to the death penalty.

Although the Riot Act was finally repealed in 1973, the Canadian offences of unlawful assembly and riot, under sections 63 and 64 of the Criminal Code respectively, are a distant reminder of the original crime. Instead of twelve people “unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously” assembled, the Canadian counterpart, unlawful assembly under s. 63, requires three or more persons “with intent to carry out any common purpose” who:

cause persons in the neighbourhood of the assembly to fear, on reasonable grounds, that they

(a) will disturb the peace tumultuously; or

(b) will by that assembly needlessly and without reasonable cause provoke other persons to disturb the peace tumultuously.

Similarly, section 64, defines the offence of riot as an unlawful assembly, presumably as per s.63, “that has begun to disturb the peace tumultuously.” Therefore, an unlawful assembly is about to become a riot, although not quite there, while a riot is exactly that: a full-blown tumultuous affair.

The defining term for these offences, in both the Criminal Code offence and the 1715 original crime, is the word “tumultuously.” To understand the meaning of this word, which is not defined in the Criminal Code, case law is needed. In the Berntt case, arising from the first Vancouver Stanley Cup Riot in 1994, at issue was the clarity of the meaning of the word “tumultuously” as found in s.64.

Defence argued the term was vague and therefore did not provide a clear understanding of the essential requirements of the crime. Without such clarity, defence argued, the accused’s ability to make full answer and defence was compromised. To try an individual on the basis of a vague law and, therefore, to potentially deprive the individual of his or her liberty if convicted would be contrary to the principles of fundamental justice under s.7 of the Charter.

The British Columbia Court of Appeal, in deciding the issue, referred to the 1992 Supreme Court of Canada decision in R. v. Nova Scotia Pharmaceutical Society and Justice Gonthier’s comments on the importance of limits, provided by clear language, which delineate our laws and permit legal debate. However, language provides boundaries only and are mere guidelines as stated by Justice Gonthier in the following passage:

Semantic arguments, based on a perception of language as an unequivocal medium, are unrealistic.  Language is not the exact tool some may think it is.  It cannot be argued that an enactment can and must provide enough guidance to predict the legal consequences of any given course of conduct in advance.  All it can do is enunciate some boundaries, which create an area of risk.  But it is inherent to our legal system that some conduct will fall along the boundaries of the area of risk; no definite prediction can then be made.  Guidance, not direction, of conduct is a more realistic objective. 

With guidelines comes context and in the end, the court found the word “tumultuously” must be read in conjunction with the other words used in the offence such as “riot” and “unlawful assembly,” which connotes a violent disturbance as opposed to an uproarious, perhaps even jubilant, crowd. History also imbued the term with particular meaning as the crimes, through their very definition, related back to old England and the Riot Act.

Thus, as they say, what goes around comes around and what was once a crime is still a crime. Interestingly, the discussion of boundaries and limits is exactly what the crimes of unlawful assembly and riot are all about: it is the lack of boundaries and limits that marks the behaviour as crimes as opposed to a Canada Day event on Parliament Hill where the crowd gathers in celebration and bon ami.

Sadly, as a coda to this posting, Ryan Berntt, the accused in question, was shot in the head by a police officer’s rubber bullet during the riot and sustained brain damage. In the end, it is individuals, both in the crowd and out of the crowd, who suffer the most. It is the individuals, not the crowd, who stand charged or must face the inevitable morning-after clean up. Perhaps this sobering reality is worth remembering. 

The Criminal Code of Canada: Codification and Reform

Whenever we read of a sensational arrest in the paper or we follow the latest celebrity trial, we are invoking the criminal law. Most of us, lawyers and lay people included, know the criminal law is found generally in the Criminal Code (drug offences are also federally created but are found in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and not in the Criminal Code). Lawyers are taught in first year Constitutional Law why the criminal law is created by Parliament: due to the Division of Powers between Provincial Legislatures and Parliament as found in the Constitution Act, 1867, which gives the Federal government exclusive authority to create criminal law.  But many of us do not know why this power resulted in a codified criminal law as opposed to the hodge-podge of criminal statutes as found in the United Kingdom.

Although the first Criminal Code was not adopted until 1892, it was conceived much earlier by our first Prime Minister, John A. MacDonald, who envisioned a codified criminal law as an important element of Confederation. Codification seemed to be on the mother country’s mind as well in 1878 as a codification of British criminal law, Bill 178, written by Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, received Second Reading in the House of Commons but died on the order paper. So too, other Commonwealth nations, such as India, Jamaica, Australia, and New Zealand, flirted with, or in some cases enacted, codified criminal laws.

Even a subsequent Royal Commission could not resuscitate the UK version of the Code. Canada, not being near as critical of the draft English Code, imported many aspects of the draft into the first Criminal Code in 1892. The rest, as they say is history as the Code has maintained its status since, albeit with amendments and renumbering along the way.

Let’s trace the crime of theft as an example. Prior to the enactment of the Criminal Code in 1892, theft was defined through British statute and common law. Indeed, the first consolidation of crimes, which occurred in 1869, included the crime of larceny: the old common law offence of theft. Presently, theft is particularized in our Criminal Code under s.322 as follows:

Every one commits theft who fraudulently and without colour of right takes, or fraudulently and without colour of right converts to his use or to the use of another person, anything, whether animate or inanimate, with intent 

(a) to deprive, temporarily or absolutely, the owner of it, or a person who has a special property or interest in it, of the thing or of his property or interest in it;

(b) to pledge it or deposit it as security;

(c) to part with it under a condition with respect to its return that the person who parts with it may be unable to perform; or 

(d) to deal with it in such a manner that it cannot be restored in the condition in which it was at the time it was taken or converted.

Historically, there were numerous statutes in England, which pertained to specific forms of theft such as embezzlement, animal theft, shoplifting, pickpocketing, housebreaking, and the like. Presently in England, although a general definition of theft can be found in the Theft Act, 1968, one would have to also look at other statutes for the specific form of theft involved. For example, the basic definition of theft in the Theft Act, 1968 states:

A person is guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it; and “thief” and “steal” shall be construed accordingly.

However, one would have to look at the Theft (Amendment) Act, 1996 for the crime of “dishonestly retaining wrongful credit.” The Canadian equivalent, of course, is theft and can be easily found under s.322.

Over the years there have been calls to reform the Code to simplify many of the complex and convoluted sections but to no avail: today’s Criminal Code reads much the same as it has for the past fifty years. Much of the difficulty stems from the amendments to the Code, which adds onto existing sections an ever-increasing number of subsections instead of making new sections by re-numbering and re-structuring the Code. For more on this, read my previous blog on lists where I outline the 33 sections found between the search warrant section under s. 487 and the execution of the search warrant found at s.488.  

Clearly, there is still work to do. In 2012, when the Code celebrates its 120^th anniversary, the Federal government should take up the call to reform in order to provide Canadians with a cogent and relevant Criminal Code, which will promote the principles of justice and be a model for developing democracies.