Nicole Doucet's Case Analysis

In R v. Ryan the accused, Nicole Doucet (then Ryan) was in a relationship with an abusive husband, who according to the accused routinely threatened to have her killed at least once a week. She sincerely believed that her husband would attempt to kill her, or their daughter, if she did not act. To this end she attempted to hire a hitman to kill her husband for her. After two failed attempts, she was approached by a man who said he would perform the task, however much to her dismay the hitman ended up being an RMCP officer who was undercover, and she was put on trial for hiring someone else to commit an offense her stead (McQuigg, 2013). She was initially acquitted under the belief she was under significant duress, however the Court of Appeal

While it is easy to sympathize with the accused and her situation, and it was an incredibly horrible position to be put in, it does not change the facts of the case. Through a period of months, she made numerous attempts to contact a hitman to kill her abusive husband, and though it easy to understand why she did that, the length of time it occurred made duress hard to apply, and self-defense even more so. Unlike the Lavallee case where, although the deceased was walking away, the danger of was clear and present in such a manner how a reasonable person would, in that instant, believe they had no other choice but to act the way she did, the case with Ryan is harder to justify. She had months to act and plan, not minutes or seconds. She was being threatened constantly, with her life and the life of her child, but her attack did not act to kill them in those months while she planned, whereas Lavallee had every reason to believe he would in short order. But this line of reasoning does open a number of uncomfortable questions. How could she have defended herself? Is it reasonable to ask her to wait for her to threaten her life and then act in a way that could have seen her killed? How can we prevent these situations in the future? There are no easy answers to any of these questions, and often these issues need to be looked at in a case by case biases. However, when the court looked at the issues in play, I find it hard to fault their opinion

Kerr the accused was an inmate in a maximum-security institution who received multiple death threats from a fellow inmate. In response, he started to carry makeshift knives on his person. The next day the accused was accosted as he was eating where the attacker was carrying a knife. In response, the fought back and killed his attack with a stab to the head. He was acquitted of charges of murder on account of self-defense, and also acquitted for carrying a deadly weapon as it was required for deterrence. His murder charge was upheld in appeal, but the weapons charge was not. When brought to the SCC made the right decision and allowed the original acquittal (R v. Kerr, 2015). It would seem absurd to allow someone to right to self-defense, but still say he should not have had the weapons he used to defend himself, as to do that would to suggest the only legal recourse he would have had would have been to