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Welcome to The Criminal Law Notebook, a free resource of Canadian criminal law written by Peter Dostal. 1246 articles Law Evidence Search and Seizure Procedure and Practice Sentencing

The Criminal Law Notebook This site reviews a variety of topics in Canadian criminal law. It is intended to be used as a reference for those seeking to understand technical elements of the law better. It will be particularly useful to practitioners, police officers and law students who need a convenient way to look up legislation, principles, and case law. Citations include links to CanLII whenever possible. The reader is assumed to have prior knowledge of criminal law. Recently the site has become a leading source of free online information for criminal law with more than 1.5 million page views each year. To learn more about this project, read the About The Criminal Law Notebook page. Please feel free to contact the author, Peter Dostal, LLB, at [email protected] with any comments. Want to help keep the Criminal Law Notebook free? Click here to make a donation. Browse our 1246 articles General Topics The articles are divided into five core categories: Criminal law, Evidence, Search and Seizure, Procedure and Practice, and Sentencing Case Digests You can also browse by case digest topic. Other Articles List of Criminal Code Amendments | Criminal Code Table of Concordance | Offences by Penalty | Offences by Category | Definitions | Criminal Code Forms | Precedents, Court Forms and Checklists | Rules of Court | Glossary | Crime Statistics | Court Composition Full Content by Volume Vol 1 - Criminal Law (A to E) Vol 1.1 - Offence Profiles (A to J) Vol 8 - Court Composition Vol 2 - Evidence (A to B) Vol 3 - Search and Seizure (A to E) Vol 4 - Procedure (A to E) Vol 5 - Sentencing Vol 6 - Case Digests (A to C) Vol 7 - Reference Materials

News November 17, 2022 Amendments come into force that removes minimum jail sentences for various firearms, weapons and drug trafficking-related offences and expands conditional sentence eligibility to include most previously ineligible offences. It also introduced Part I.1 to the CDSA, which directs police and Crown to consider non-criminal options for all drug possession offences. October 28, 2022 Supreme Court of Canada in R v Ndhlovu, 2022 SCC 38 (CanLII), per Karakatsanis and Martin JJ strikes down the provisions requiring offenders convicted of multiple sexual offences to be put on the sexual offender registry for life. The law violated s. 7 of the Charter for being "overbroad". June 30, 2022 Supreme Court of Canada in R v JJ, 2022 SCC 28 (CanLII), per Wagner CJ and Moldaver J upholds the constitutionality of the statutory protections to complainants' personal information found in s. 278.92 to 278.94 of the Code. June 23, 2022 Amendments coming into force rewriting s. 33.1 of the Code concerning the extreme intoxication defence for certain violent offences. May 27, 2022 Supreme Court of Canada in R v Bissonnette, 2022 SCC 23 (CanLII), per Wagner CJ declares s. 745.51 of the Code unconstitutional, removing the statutory requirement that the periods of parole ineligibility for multiple murders be served consecutively. May 13, 2022 Supreme Court of Canada in R v Sullivan, 2022 SCC 19, per Kasirer J declares s. 33.1 of the Code unconstitutional, removing the statutory prohibition against self-induced intoxication defences for certain offences. January 16, 2022 Amendments creating a new offences relating to impeding health care services came into force. January 7, 2022 Amendments creating new offences relating to conversion therapy came into force. May 6, 2021 An amendment, adding s. 278.98 to the Criminal Code, came into force. April 8, 2021 Feature Update: Look up offences quickly using the "Quick Access" link on the Navigation sidebar. May 8, 2020 Feature Update: Quotations from most legislation now include an option to note up the provision on CanLII. Older news... or Twitter External Links CanLII.org and OpenParliament.ca primarydocuments.ca Canliiconnects.org Henry Waldock's Legal Topics for Canadian Police Altantic Police Academy News Law 10-8 Justice Institute of BC Newsletter Duhaime On Criminal Law Criminal Law Notebook on Twitter DOJ Research Reports on Criminal Justice System The Preparation, Citation and Distribution of Canadian Decisions Canadian Criminal Law Headnotes (experimental) Other links...

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