Convoy leader James Bauder loses bid to move criminal trial outside Ottawa

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James Bauder, one of many leaders of final winter’s convoy protest, has misplaced his bid to have his legal trial moved out of town.

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In a ruling this week, Superior Courtroom Justice Charles Hackland doubted many individuals in Ottawa knew Bauder’s identify and, in any occasion, there is no such thing as a assure that jurors share an accused’s political opinions.

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Bauder, a 52-year-old from Calgary, had argued that he was a sufferer of “political persecution” and that he couldn’t get a good trial as a result of the protest focused the federal authorities and so many potential jurors in Ottawa are authorities workers. He wished his trial on prices of mischief to impede property, disobeying a lawful courtroom order and impede/resist a peace officer to be held in Brockville or North Bay as an alternative.

“I consider that I can’t get a good trial in Ottawa as a result of I participated in a really high-profile, extremely politicized, lawful protest directed on the federal authorities in Ottawa,” Bauder, who was self-represented, informed the courtroom on the Feb. 3 listening to.

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“(T)he character and character sorts in Ottawa are authorities staff and the convoy was a protest towards authorities overreach,” he stated, including, “these authorities workers should not my friends.”

The choose didn’t purchase it.

“I discover that Mr. Bauder’s issues concerning the attitudes of individuals employed by the federal authorities, is baseless in truth and boils right down to his concern that the majority Ottawa residents don’t share his political opinions,” Hackland wrote in his resolution.

“There is no such thing as a proper to be tried by individuals who share one’s political opinions.”

Moreover, Hackland dominated that regardless of Bauder’s key function in founding the Canada Unity motion and the large native, nationwide and worldwide media protection the convoy introduced, few individuals would know his identify.

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“There was not quite a lot of media protection targeted on Mr. Bauder,” Hackland wrote. “What there was tended to easily report what he had stated infrequently. I critically doubt that Mr. Bauder is well-known to Ottawa residents. The hostile protection within the media that Mr. Bauder complains of is directed on the Freedom Convoy, not at Mr. Bauder particularly. There’s nothing concerning the media protection that will make it unlikely that Mr. Bauder would obtain a good trial on this group.”

What the choose did have issues about was one thing that Bauder failed to say in his arguments: That many potential jurors had been “had been injured or suffered bodily, psychologically, or economically by the Freedom Convoy.”

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“The protesters blocked their neighbourhoods, stored them awake at nights by the honking of truck horns, and gasoline fumes, and in some circumstances subjected them to non-public harassment, and obstructed their companies,” the choose wrote.

However Hackland stated that potential bias could be overcome by common courtroom procedures, together with correct juror screening, thorough directions from the presiding choose and the pure presumption of innocence.

“Mr. Bauder shouldn’t be on trial for his politics, however for his alleged legal conduct,” Hackland wrote.

“We don’t as a society anticipate our jurors to be a tabula rasa devoid of any political opinions. Moderately, and with the help of strong procedural safeguards, we belief jurors to depart their views on the door of the deliberation room and resolve the case on the proof, as per the trial choose’s directions.

“There is no such thing as a purpose to assume that this is not going to be the case in Mr. Bauder’s trial.”