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Supreme Court changes rules on extradition
Canada's highest court says judges are not mere rubber stamps in extradition cases -- a ruling that could make it more difficult to send accused people to other countries for trial. In a pair of decisions handed down yesterday, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously upheld the constitutionality of the 1999 federal law governing extradition. But the court set out a new test for judges when deciding whether an accused person should be handed over to another state. It says the evidence at hand must amount to a case that could go to trial in Canada and potentially result in a guilty verdict. "The judge must act as a judge, not a rubber stamp," Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin said in writing for the court. The decision represents a break from the past when a judge had no discretion
to refuse to extradite if there was any evidence, "however scant
or suspect," supporting the alleged offence. |