tickets for working defence counsel being left unaddressed risks an impression of complacency or worse - acceptance. how can we expect ppl to trust the fairness of the criminal courts if violence against decendants' lawyers happens & it's business as usual?

this is a crisis for the criminal law system in oshawa and will remain so the longer it remains unaddressed by other parties to the system - especially the crown, who often rely on the police for evidence and arrests, & the court itself, which is often asks counsel to stay late. violence & trespass

*sudine riley. jfc jay

except you, except sundine riley. and for "daring" to stay past closing hours to work in that system, the system responded with violence.

what happened to sundine riley makes me so angry i could choke with it. because she was almost certainly targeted for who she was AND what she did - a young Black woman who was a defense lawyer, a job that requires one to be cordial and make nice with all parts of the system housed in a building -

are dealing with housing insecurity, have histories of abuse or trauma, have limited support systems, are Indigenous, Black, otherwise a person of colour, young, or some combination thereof, usually poor, and that more likely than anything else they have been charged with a breach of conditions.

that NO LEVEL OF COURT, the SOLICITOR GENERAL, can say anything about what they will do in response.
has the oshawa crown said anything?
never mind that most of the people defense counsel work with suffer from mental health concerns & substance use disorders for which they cannot access help,

innocent people in jail for months or didn't have a warrant to search them or their home or or or. so it's not something the SIU things is worth investigating when cops maybe assault and terrorise a Black woman defense lawyer, remove her headscarf and drag her to cells in the basement. & it's fiiine

alleged criminals must be from politicians and police and tv and movies and etc., that these MUST be bad (less than) people and so defense counsel, in choosing to defend them, must also be bad (incompetent, immoral) lawyers. so it's ~okay~ when cops "rough up" someone on arrest or we keep legally -

for all that our system is premised on "the presumption of innocence", in practice criminal law and the system that operates it treates the accused & everyone associated w/ them (incl) their lawyers, as guilty of ~something~ the minute they enter. we have been so inundated by messages about who -

a problem if a judge has requested something. but more generally, this state of affairs further deepens an already existing divide in the crim law system reflected in funding for LAO, court scheduling, disclosure processes, service availability, everything about jails & prisons, etc -

ALSO: in ontario courthouses, private defence counsel just happen to be the most visible lawyers staying late - crown counsel (& lao-employed lawyers, whose role is often different from private counsel) have their own offices IN THE COURTHOUSE. if defence counsel leaves they can't return -

happy to help! 😊

can all make it through this together. Don't let them isolate you and pick you off one by one, rage against the dying of the light and start a fucking bonfire to keep that shit going, stay with us and we'll watch the sun rise together over the world we built

Moreover, ICE must be destroyed