Jay De Santi

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

obscene. as alan richter says in the article: the officers would have known through that encounter that she was a lawyer.

impossible not to see the confluence of anti-black racism, misogyny, & unchecked police violence so familiar to the criminal system, now turned against one of its members.

another troubling question the incident raises is the protection of defendants' rights to, or exercised with the assistance of, counsel. if their lawyers' physical safety is at risk (& they risk criminal charges) for working, how can defendants be expected to believe the system is fair?

*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 -

Lawyer alleges Durham Region police violently assaulted her, dragged her to cells in Oshawa courthouse | CBC News A lawyer says she was left bloody and swollen after multiple Durham regional police officers allegedly slammed her head on a desk without provocation, ripped off her head scarf and dragged her to the ...

in addition to what de melo notes here that defence lawyers may stay late because JUDGES ask us to--if you're in court daily, you start to recognise the faces of the other ppl who work there. are we supposed to believe the officers who (allegedly) assaulted her didn't know who riley was?

A historic fight for press freedom begins Four years after a dramatic arrest, Amber Bracken and The Narwhal are turning the tables and suing the RCMP. The trial starts today.

Here's a story from Canada's National Observer about our press freedom case against the RCMP, which is underway right now in B.C.'s Supreme Court. www.nationalobserver.com/2026/01/12/a...

"Attorneys get their clients off on technicalities!"

If my client is walking on a "technicality," it's because either the state, their bank, or their landlord BROKE THE LAW and therefore should not win.

i am SO STOKED for this paper to be out in the world. got to read an early draft. bold and unflinching examination of a particularly dangerous mismatch of law and evidence that has real-world consequences. crim law practioners, judges, and academics, take a read when it's out!

happy to help! 😊

I know people are closely following what's going on the US and the horrors of ICE, but do you know how Canada is quickly and quietly is growing its deportation machinery?

Canada plans to increase deportations by 25 percent over the next two years. 25 PERCENT!!!

Here are 5 other things to know:

sisi thibert. alloura wells. julie berman.
and this year: sam norquist. elisa rae shupe.
eden knight.
brianna ghey. nex benedict.
every one of them deserve life.
as places like ab & nz willingly join the ranks of anti-trans state hostility, remember the lawmakers chose to add to these lists.

This Trans Day of Remembrance taking a short break from mourning the dead to think about how much of a miracle it is that I survived all of this shit and how us supporting each other and fundamentally changing the social relations of our society are the only ways we

Moreover, ICE must be destroyed

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

this is a great idea imo. participants in criminal legal systems with decision-making power should understand the human consequences of their decisions. i'd argue this extends to the lawyers, too - prosecutors & defense. make it part of their/our CPD.

Before Game 7 — HUM & CHUCK But doubt aside, the Toronto Blue Jays have earned it in all the ways a team can.

Well, shit. I wrote something about this team we've been watching #bluejays www.humandchuck.com/baseball/202...

Wasn’t able to watch WS live but apparently the Jonas Bros did some of a song at some point? I cannot express this urgently enough: NO. Baseball is not meant to be associated with entertainment. The beauty of baseball is its uninterrupted agony. The outside world must be barred from the stadiums.

I wanna posit this really big and awkward question: What does "Canadian digital sovereignty" mean for Indigenous Peoples here when Canada is not only giving up its pretences for "Reconciliation", but also increasingly hostile to Indigenous Peoples who oppose Canada as a resource extraction colony?

You want a nuanced analysis of "digital sovereignty?" Ask Indigenous people who have been thinking about this long before settlers have who take the notion of "sovereignty" for granted. That's why Canadians are flailing about panicking now. They didn't barely considered this a "thing" until Trump

I've yet to see a single discussion of "Canadian digital sovereignty" include any Indigenous experts, at best we're given a token mention that at some point they'll "consult with Indigenous Peoples" like we're some sort of monolith. Umm, y'all need to consider all our lands, and our distinctiveness.

It's as if there's some sort of weird cognitive algorithm in the minds of settlers that Indigenous Peoples = backwards and savage therefore anything tech related doesn't apply to them.

Ummmm, you do realize all this "Canadian digital sovereignty" stuff requires unfettered access to Indigenous land.