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Videos in hockey players' trial highlight misconceptions about consent: Law experts
Videos in hockey players' trial highlight misconceptions about consent: Law experts

National Post

time21 hours ago

  • Sport
  • National Post

Videos in hockey players' trial highlight misconceptions about consent: Law experts

As five former Canadian world junior hockey players await a ruling in their sexual assault trial, legal experts say videos shown in court of the complainant saying she was OK with what had happened highlight a broader misunderstanding of consent and sexual assault law in Canada. Article content Two cellphone videos in which the woman says she's 'OK with this' and that 'it was all consensual' were presented as evidence during the trial of Michael McLeod, Carter Hart, Alex Formenton, Dillon Dube, and Callan Foote. Article content Article content All five men have pleaded not guilty to sexual assault after an encounter in a London, Ont., hotel room in the early morning hours of June 19, 2018. McLeod has also pleaded not guilty to an additional charge of being a party to the offence of sexual assault. Article content Ontario Superior Court Justice Maria Carroccia is expected to deliver her ruling on Thursday in the case that saw consent emerge as a central issue. Article content Prosecutors have argued the complainant did not voluntarily agree to the sexual acts that took place, nor did the players take reasonable steps to confirm her consent. The Crown has dismissed the videos taken of the woman that night as 'token lip service box checking,' arguing she felt she had no choice but to go along when a group of men she didn't know started asking her to do things inside the hotel room. Article content Defence lawyers, meanwhile, repeatedly challenged the complainant's credibility and reliability as a witness, arguing she was an active participant in the sexual activity and made up the allegations because she didn't want to take responsibility for her choices that night. Article content Video statements such as the short clips shown in this trial aren't necessarily evidence of consent, said University of Ottawa law professor Daphne Gilbert. Article content Article content 'Legally speaking, they have very little relevance because consent has to be ongoing and contemporaneous with the sexual activity and you have to be consenting to every single thing that is happening to you,' said Gilbert, who researches sexual violence and abuse in Canadian sports. Article content 'There's no such thing as advance consent. And there's no thing as after-the-fact consent, either. So just because you say, 'Yeah, it was all consensual' doesn't mean that makes it so.' Article content Lisa Dufraimont, a law professor at York University, said such videos could also be seen as hearsay because they don't contain statements made under oath in court. Article content 'If the complainant got on the stand at the trial and testified that they consented at the time, that would be evidence that they consented at the time,' said Dufraimont, whose research focuses on evidence issues in sexual assault cases. Article content But she said the videos could be used for other legal arguments, including those that may rely on a description of how a defendant or complainant was acting at the time. Article content 'It may be that if the video is taken close in time to the alleged sexual assault, that the video shows something about the person's level of intoxication or their emotional state, which may or may not be consistent with what they later reported their emotional state was at the time,' said Dufraimont. Article content During the trial, the Crown argued that the videos shown in court weren't proof that the complainant voluntarily agreed to what had taken place. Article content 'The recording of that video is not getting her consent to anything. Everything's already happened,' prosecutor Meaghan Cunningham said about the video in which the woman said it was 'all consensual,' adding that consent must be communicated for each specific act at the time it takes place. Article content Only one of the accused, Hart, took the stand in his own defence, and court heard or watched interviews three of the others _ McLeod, Formenton and Dube — gave police in 2018. People accused of crimes are not required to testify, nor is the defence required to call any evidence, as it is up to the Crown to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Article content In McLeod's 2018 interview with police, he told a detective that he recorded one of the videos because he was 'just kind of worried something like this might happen.' Article content On the stand, Hart testified that consent videos aren't unusual for professional athletes. Article content Gilbert, the University of Ottawa law professor, said Canada in general still has work to do in educating young people about consent, especially in sports. She's involved in efforts to teach youth about consent through school programming, but said professional hockey in particular is behind on enacting policies to address the issue.

‘Stop violating the law!': Exasperated judge blasts Trump for blackout over public money
‘Stop violating the law!': Exasperated judge blasts Trump for blackout over public money

The Independent

timea day ago

  • Politics
  • The Independent

‘Stop violating the law!': Exasperated judge blasts Trump for blackout over public money

A federal judge gave Donald Trump's administration some simple instructions when it comes to 'violating' the law: Stop doing it. In a ruling on Monday, District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington, D.C. found that the White House Office of Management and Budget illegally took down a public website showing how federal agencies spend taxpayer money. 'There is nothing unconstitutional about Congress requiring the Executive Branch to inform the public of how it is apportioning the public's money,' Sullivan wrote in a 60-page opinion. 'Defendants are therefore required to stop violating the law!' added Sullivan — emphasis his. The administration removed the website in March. OMB director Russell Vought told members of Congress that the office intentionally flouted the law by scraping the database due to the 'sensitive' and 'deliberative' nature of the information on it. A lawsuit from nonprofit watchdog groups Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and Protect Democracy accused the administration of removing data to which they are statutorily entitled as part of their efforts to monitor government funding. According to Sullivan, Trump and Vought relied on 'an extravagant and unsupported theory of presidential power' to argue that the government's appropriation of public funds does not need to be publicly disclosed. Instead, they complained about the 'extra work' required of them under law passed by Congress in 2022 and 2023, Sullivan wrote. 'This is a management issue; not a constitutional one,' he said. The judge ordered OMB to restore the database and publicly disclose the information on it, including any apportionment information from the time the database was taken offline. 'The law is clear that the federal government must make its appropriations decisions public,' according to Adina Rosenbaum, Public Citizen Litigation Group attorney and counsel on the case. 'So this case turned on a straightforward point: The administration must follow the law.' Nikhel Sus, deputy chief counsel at CREW, said the decision 'reaffirms Congress's constitutional authority to require public disclosure of how taxpayer dollars are spent.' 'Americans have a right to know how taxpayer money is being spent,' he added. 'Ensuring public access to this information serves as a critical check on the executive branch's abuse and misuse of federal funds.' The Trump administration has repeatedly taken a beating in federal court, with dozens of court orders across the country striking down key elements of his agenda as unconstitutional, or, in one case, confounding a judge who compared his sweeping executive actions to a 'gumbo' giving him 'heartburn.' The president, whose critics have accused him of mounting a constitutional crisis in his defiance of the courts, has resisted court orders nearly one-third of the time. In an analysis of 165 court orders filed against the Trump administration, The Washington Post found the president has been accused of defying decisions in at least 57 cases. The Supreme Court's recent decision stemming from legal challenges striking down his executive order that seeks to redefine birthright citizenship could significantly diminish judicial authority. The high court's decision could effectively prevent judges — who are facing an avalanche of legal questions challenging the constitutionality of the president's agenda — from issuing nationwide injunctions, making it extraordinarily difficult to unwind the president's actions if they are later found to be illegal. Vought, meanwhile, argues that the appropriations process should be 'less bipartisan.' 'There is no voter in the country that went to the polls and said, 'I'm voting for a bipartisan appropriations process,'' he told a Christian Science Monitor event last week. 'That may be the view of something that appropriators want to maintain.' Vought, a former Heritage Foundation policy director and co-author of Project 2025, had recently ushered through legislation to revoke $9 billion in previously approved federal funding to gut global aid programs and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds National Public Radio and PBS.

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