Abused wife free after Supreme Court tosses hit-man hire case
Top court rejects 'duress' defence in also overturning acquittal of N.S. woman The Supreme Court of Canada has overturned the acquittal of an abused woman who tried to hire a hit man to kill her husband, but the decision released today also ordered the Crown to drop her case.
With all proceedings against her stayed in the 8-1 decision, Nicole Doucet Ryan cannot be retried for counselling to commit murder.
Doucet, as she is now known, a high school teacher in southwestern Nova Scotia, was arrested in March 2008 and charged with counselling an undercover police officer to kill Michael Ryan.
Doucet told lower courts of years of abuse at the hands of her husband.
He had pointed a gun at her a number of times, thrown pieces of furniture at her, and had threatened to "burn the f---king house down" with her and her daughter inside if she tried to leave.
She testified her husband had been charged with uttering threats against her, but that those charges were dropped. She also said she had called the RCMP on nine occasions and 911 on one occasion.
The woman testified that she had complained to the police, but had been told it was a "civil" matter and there was nothing they could do. However, when she began to seek out a hit man to kill her husband, the RCMP deployed an uncover officer to act as a hit man. Shortly after she agreed to pay him, she was arrested.
Nicole Ryan, a high school teacher in southwestern Nova Scotia, was arrested in March 2008 and charged with counselling an undercover police officer to kill her husband, Michael Ryan. (CBC )
The top court's decision, written by Justices Louis LeBel and Thomas Cromwell, said it was "disquieting" that "it seems the authorities were much quicker to intervene to protect Mr. Ryan than they had been to respond to her request for help in dealing with his reign of terror over her."
The only dissenting justice was Morris Fish, who argued Doucet should have been retried.
Unusual defence of 'duress'
Doucet's lawyers had used the unusual defence of duress, rather than self-defence, in her case. Duress can apply when someone reasonably fears for his or her life or safety, and sees no reasonable avenue of escape.
Self-defence is based on the premise that it is lawful to meet force with force. But in duress cases, the victim is usually an innocent third party, someone forced to commit a crime against his or her will, and not the person directly being threatened. The court found that duress did not apply in this case.
In a media lockup Friday before the decision was released publicly, duress was explained using the example of someone wielding a gun and ordering a person to steal a laptop belonging to a third party. If the person being ordered to steal fought back, and attacked the gun-holder, that would be an example of committing an offence under duress.
The court did not consider the option of self-defence, because it had never been argued by the woman's lawyers, so the issue of whether self-defence could have been used in a case involving a hit man has not been settled by this appeal.
It's not clear whether a defence of self-defence would have been available to Doucet, since she was not living with her husband when she began to look for a hit man.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2013/01/18/pol-supreme-court-duress-defence-battered-women.html Then we have the husband's story;Nicole Ryan: An interesting case in Canada
I found this article. In March 2008, Nicole Ryan of Nova Scotia was charged with conspiracy to commit murder after hiring at hitman to kill her husband, Michael Ryan. Her father was also charged with counseling to commit murder. The "hitman" was an undercover Mountie conducting a sting.
Ryan was acquitted in March 2010 based on a duress defense. She claimed she had been controlled, abused and threatened at gunpoint by her husband. Her lawyer argued that the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) had failed to sufficiently respond to Ryan's numerous complaints against her husband. Based on threats against herself and their daughter, Ryan decided her only choice was to take matters into her own hands.
The acquittal is being appealed. Here's where it really gets interesting. Michael Ryan was not called to testify, but he has shared his side of the story. After columnist Stephen Kimber called Michael Ryan "a nasty piece of business" in this column about the case, Ryan replied to the accusations. I strongly encourage you to first read the news article, the column and ensuing comments, and the actual Supreme Court Decision. I went through this process, and my opinion changed several times as I continued to read.
Michael Ryan claims that the allegations of abuse were created for the defense in the trial. He said all corroborating witnesses simply testified about things Nicole had told them, therefore the only evidence against him was her word. He said she had multiple opportunities to report abuse prior to the trial and neglected to do so. He reported that it was he who had left her, that he had been granted custody of their daughter because she was an unfit mother, and that she was currently battling him for custody and for the couple's $1 million in assets and property. He also pointed out that 3 of Nicole's family members, including her father and sister, were found of guilty of assault against Michael Ryan and his girlfriend in an earlier incident. Apparently they had attacked Ryan and his girlfriend with a pipe. It appears that since it was the Crown who prosecuted and not Michael Ryan, he was not really represented in the trial.
http://nicolemueller.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/nicole-ryan-an-interesting-case-in-canada/
