Why haven't Vancouver rioters been charged yet? Blame B.C.'s dysfunctional court system, says a retired broadcast news journalist whose award-winning reporting zeroed in on the province's legal institutions seven years ago.
Former BCTV reporter Harvey Oberfeld says in a post on his blog that police and prosecutors are so plodding in their approach "because they have no choice but to try and make each case so watertight that it can survive B.C.'s ocean of floating legal mines, deadhead-delay lawyers, and masses of paper pollution to even make it to its destination … a trial where the evidence, not some technical point, determines the outcome."
Oberfeld's series of five TV news reports, titled Contempt For Court, won a Webster Award for Legal Journalism in 2004. "The impression I have now is that the system has since become even worse, not improved," he writes.
Oberfeld says his reporting convinced him that B.C.'s court system is so slow because judges are too few and work "cushy hours." The system, he says, "allows defence lawyers to delay and delay cases, which I submit is not just for essential reasons, but part of strategy so witnesses forget, move or can no longer be found or even argue the justice delayed so long was justice denied, and successfully move for dismissal."
Oberfeld says people who work in the court system and might agree with his criticism are leery of making their views public for fear of getting on the wrong side of judges.
David Beers is editor of The Tyee.
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