A B.C. government lawyer evoked the spectre of mob justice today during arguments in the B.C. Court of Appeal over the issue of Crown prosecutors' immunity from testifying.
The court is hearing a Crown appeal of a ruling which asks prosecutors to explain why they didn't charge two Vancouver police officers who left an aboriginal man to freeze to death in an alley a decade ago.
The Frank Paul inquiry report has been placed on hold to await the outcome of the appeal.
The inquiry commissioner in the case had ruled that three prosecutors had to answer for the decision not to lay charges against the two police officers who dealt with Paul the night he died.
The argument has also forced the delay of an inquest looking a murder-suicide involving Peter Lee, who killed his son, his wife and his in-laws in Oak Bay near Victoria in September of 2007.
The jury in that case was due to hear why prosecutors agreed to bail for Lee prior to the attack on his family, but a B.C. Supreme Court judge ruled earlier that the independence of prosecutors needs to be protected.
The B.C. Criminal Justice Branch has said prosecutors are immune under the Constitution from having to justify their decisions.
Lawyer Richard Peck, speaking for the Criminal Justice Branch, says prosecutors, like judges, work independently and base their decisions on facts, not emotions.
He says if outsiders were to review prosecutors' decisions there could be a chilling effect on their work and the public would become suspicious and lose confidence in the system.
Peck referred to it as sinking to "the level of a mob looking for a tree."
