Drug and deportation cases go before Supreme Court winter session

[Joe Shlabotnik]

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms will get a broad airing at the Supreme Court this winter, as the court looks into criminal cases involving police search-and-seizure operations that netted large amounts of drugs.

Several other cases before the court in the coming weeks involve litigants trying to stay in Canada, either by avoiding extradition orders, skirting refugee exemptions or beating deportation orders.

...the Supreme Court will need to clarify what constitutes “reasonable suspicion.”

Also at issue is whether that suspicion justifies the use of a sniffer dog and whether the defendants’ rights against unreasonable search or seizure, as outlined in Section 8 of the charter, were trampled. Section 24 of the charter mandates that evidence gathered illegally must be thrown out.

...A third case involving an alleged violation of charter rights involves a search-and-seizure at a Langley, B.C. property that resulted in the busting of a marijuana grow operation in 2007. A police search of two laptops and a cell phone found at the property, for which police had a search warrant, led to the arrest of Thanh Long Vu.

At his trial, Vu argued that the warrant did not extend to electronic devices, meaning police did not have the right to scour them and link him to the grow op.

http://www.ipolitics.ca/2013/01/08/drug-and-deportation-cases-go-before-supreme-court-winter-session/
(More at link, and in better context then presented here )

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In October Harper appointed his 5th (of 9) Supreme Court Justice.