Ultimately it’s probably due to limited resources. It’s gotta be orders of magnitude cheaper to convict them for shorter sentencing on a lower severity charge than to go to trial for the correct charge. Especially when even if they get convicted in trial, the sentencing is a joke anyways.
A finding of “not guilty” was the result in just more than 3% of the more than 390,000 criminal cases in the country in 2008-2009, according to data recently released by Statistics Canada.
If Quebec is excluded from the totals the percentage drops to a little more than 1% — just 3,570 people acquitted in the rest of the country last year.
The data contained in the annual Adult Criminal Court Statistics needs to be looked at with some context though, say those involved in the criminal justice system.
For example, it does not mean that everyone charged with a criminal offence is eventually found guilty.The Statistics Canada report shows that one in three cases across the country is withdrawn by the Crown without any criminal conviction because of a lack of evidence. Ontario is even higher than the national average, with more than 40% of cases withdrawn before they get to trial.
It is the remaining two-thirds of cases in which the prosecution does not withdraw, that a finding of guilt is registered nearly 99% of the time, except in Quebec.
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In about 95% of cases in which the Crown proceeds to trial, there is a plea bargain. “Guilty to a lesser offence may engage many of the same important public interests as an acquittal,” Mr. Burstein said. “It does not mean police got it right,” he said.
https://nationalpost...end-in-aquittal
Edited by Victoria Watcher, 16 August 2022 - 12:24 AM.