In a Saskatchewan courtroom last week, a decision came down that has kicked a hornet’s nest of controversy which has already begun to ripple across our country and through our society.
It took 15 hours for the all-white jury to acquit Gerald Stanley in the shooting death of Colten Boushie on Aug. 9, 2016.
The cultural make-up of the jury is one of the questions left hanging over the judicial system in our country. Juries are believed to be made up of people representative of our peers, or our communities. Here was a case of the man left dead being First Nations, the man holding the weapon which killed the 22-year-old being white.
Whenever a potential jurist of First Nations background came before the selection process Stanley’s defence lawyer rejected them. It is at this time possible to reject a number of jurists without giving a reason, but did it leave a jury reflective of a community’s peers? Are we to believe the peers are only white in any community in this country today?
The way juries are selected in cases such as this is one of the first things which need to be at discussed in this country.
The exclusion of First Nations jurists smacks of racism in as much as it leaves the impression they could not have been trusted to make an unbiased decision because the dead man in the case was First Nations.
Is that a fairer conclusion than expecting 12 white jurors having to rule on a white defendant’s guilt or innocence?
And for the sake of comparison consider the uproar if a First Nations person was the accused in the shooting of a non-aboriginal. In that trial there was a First Nation judge, the crown judge and defense judge were First Nation, and the 12 jurors were First Nation. The trial came and went and the First Nation man was found not guilty. It would lead to accusations of racism flooding our country.
At that point this case comes under the all too real cloud of racism which sadly still permeates much of our society when talking about white and First Nations relations.
We might like to think we have grown beyond that point, but as much as the process of reconciliation is ongoing, it is a long way from rooting out the distrust, the fear, and, in many cases, the hatred which exists between too many non-aboriginal and First Nations.
This court case, which was held in a rural Saskatchewan community, will do nothing but set the delicate situation back years.
And as this case traipses through the steps of appeal from one level of court to the next it will scratch at the sore it created, never allowing healing to start until the Supreme Court is likely called upon for a final ruling, a situation which may take years.
But this case is dangerous for more than stirring the fires of racism.
We cannot lose sight that in the end, 22-year-old Colten Boushie is dead. Yes, he may have been attempting theft at the time he died, but that hardly seems to be something for which a young man should die.
There is another fundamental question which needs to be asked: What things that we own are so valuable that it is reasonable to load a firearm and head out knowing the weapon in our hands can kill in the heat of the moment, whether because of a trigger pulled in anger, or by a freak accident that launches a bullet into the head of a would-be thief?
Is a tank of gas being stolen worth a young person ending up in the morgue?
An ATV? The half-ton truck parked in the yard? Should we be able to pop off a couple of warning shots when someone heads into the backyard to steal lawn gnomes?
Is that now to be potentially seen as a reasonable response to theft? Or, is the response to lock the front door, call the police, and let the insurance agent deal with any items taken.
It is clear that this acquittal is not suggesting it's alright to fire your gun at potential thieves, but it is certainly a perception some are going to carry away from this ruling, and that is a scary thing moving forward, especially in rural Canada.
In the end, no one, besides Stanley, won in this case. Race relations in our country were battered yet again. The viewpoint of property theft and excessive force in protecting that property are being questioned. The healing process will be long and rocky, and in that way, we all lost something the night Boushie died in a Saskatchewan farm yard.
