Police and prosecutors sometimes make good decisions on the issue, said Daniel Brown, president of the Criminal Lawyers Association of Ontario.Article content
Brown represented a man charged with aggravated assault after he confronted and, during a scuffle, stabbed a man who had broken into his house and entered a bedroom where his mother-in-law slept. The burglar even applied to the Ontario government for victim-of-crime compensation.
“The charges laid in relation to the shooting … are serious and are reflective of the evidence collected by homicide and forensic investigators,” said the force in its statement, declining to provide further details. In the Halifax case last month, two men tried to break into a home when they were accosted by one of the residents. A man was stabbed to death, but no charges laid based on evidence officers had gathered, city police said at the time.