Background
One evening in February 1985, Patrick Tremblay and 15 year-old Mr. Martineau set out to rob a trailer owned by the McLean family in Valleyview, Alberta. Martineau was armed with a pellet gun and Tremblay was armed with a rifle. Martineau was under the impression that they were only going to commit breaking and entering and no one would be killed. However, during the robbery Tremblay shot and killed Mr. and Mrs. McLean.
Martineau was charged with second degree murder under s.213(a) and (d) of the Criminal Code of Canada (now s. 230(a) and (d)) for both deaths (under s.21(1) and (2)) and was transferred to adult court.
At trial Martineau was convicted. But in appeal at the Alberta Court of Appeal the court overturned the decision, concluding that s.213(a) violated s.7 and s.11(d) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The issue before the Court was whether the appeal court was correct in holding s.213(a) as a violation of ss. 7 and 11(d) of the Charter.
Read more about this topic: R. V. Martineau
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)