Wednesday, April 25. 2012

Today's schedule is B-A-D-C

B Block Law 12 -  Today we'll start with working on question 5 from page 178 and then together as a class we'll talk about question 7 from page 179: The plea negotiation has become the primary means of dispensing justice in Canada. It is effective, both for accused criminals looking to minimize their punishment and for prosecutors coping with the torrent of cases sloshing through the courts. Is it morally correct to trade the legal rights guaranteed by the Charter for convenience and cost savings? This question deals with Plea Bargains in Criminal Law. From the Department of Justice here in Canada: Broadly speaking, the promises that may be made by Crown counsel fall into three, overlapping categories: (1) promises relating to the nature of the charges to be laid (charge bargaining); (2) promises relating to the ultimate sentence that may be meted out by the court (sentence bargaining); and (3) promises relating to the facts that the Crown may bring to the attention of the trial judge (fact bargaining).

1. Charge Bargaining
   1. Reduction of the charge to a lesser included offence;
   2. Withdrawal or stay of other charges or the promise not to proceed with other possible charges; or
   3. Promise not to charge friends or family of the defendant; or
   4. Promise to withdraw a charge in return for the defendant's undertaking to enter into a peace bond.
2. Sentence Bargaining
   1. Promise to proceed summarily rather than by way of indictment;
   2. Promise to make a specific sentence recommendation;
   3. Promise not to oppose defence counsel's sentence recommendation;
   4. Promise to submit a joint sentencing submission;
   5. Promise not to appeal against sentence imposed at trial;
   6. Promise not to apply for a more severe penalty (for example, by not giving notice to seek a higher range of sentence based on the accused's previous conviction – s. 727 of the Criminal Code);
   7. Promise not to apply to the trial court for a finding that the accused is a dangerous offender (s. 753 of the Criminal Code) or a long–term offender (s. 753.1 of the Criminal Code);
   8. Promise to make a representation as to the place of imprisonment, type of treatment, etc.; or
   9. Promise to arrange the sentence hearing before a particular judge.
3. Fact bargaining
   1. promise not to "volunteer" information detrimental to the accused during the sentencing hearing;
   2. promise not to mention a circumstance of the offence that may be interpreted by the judge as an aggravating factor (see, for example, the aggravating factors listed in s. 718.2(a) of the Criminal Code).

After, we begin our look at courts and trial procedures. We'll look at the three court levels in BC (Provincial, Supreme, and Appellate) then we'll focus on courtroom organization and then we'll discuss the roles and responsibilities of the judge, the crown prosecutor, defense counsel, the court clerk, court recorder, and sheriff.

A Block Social Studies 11 - Today we'll continue our look at the Holocaust in World War Two. The United States Holocaust Memorial/Museum has a very good website dedicated to teaching the public about the Holocaust and we'll use it to help us understand. I'll show you two sections of the movie Schindler's List. The first section we'll watch is the liquidation of the ghetto in Krakow by the Nazi Einsatzgruppen. The second section we'll watch is when a group of women are taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Hopefully we'll have some time to talk about the sections afterwards. We'll then talk about the end of the war in Europe and switch our focus to the Pacific. If there's time, we'll look at the Manhattan Project and the use of nuclear weapons in Japan (Hiroshima and Nagasaki). This takes us to V-J Day and the end of World War Two.

D Block Criminology 12 - OK so today we'll turn our focus to the history of crime and law (looking at Hammurabi, the Mosaic Code and the development of Common Law in England). We'll learn what Actus Reus, Mens Rea, Mala in Se and Mala Prohibitum mean along with taking a look at the differences between Indictable, Summary Conviction and Absolute Liability Offences. We'll see what defenses you can use and what the goals of criminal law are for society. After, we'll discuss crime trends and how we tabulate crime statistics (UCR, PRVS, Self-Reports).

C Block Geography 12 - Today we'll begin our look at stratospheric ozone. Ozone is a gas that occurs both in the Earth's upper atmosphere and at ground level. Ozone can be "good" or "bad" for your health and the environment, depending on its location in the atmosphere. After looking at the ways that ozone protects us and understanding how it can be destroyed by CFCs (Tim and Moby will help us here) you'll need to complete questions 8 and 9 from page 90 in your Geosystems textbook. For more information on Ozone look at:
Environment Canada Ozone site
US Environmental Protection Agency Stratospheric Ozone page
European Commission on the Environment Ozone page
Ozzy Ozone UNEP Kids Ozone Site
NOAA Ozone depletion page

Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips indicated last fall that predicting the weather is becoming much more difficult. "It's almost as if you can't look at the past to tell us what the future is," David Phillips told CBC News. "There's a new norm: Expect the unexpected." Check out the article here.