Usually, when the Supreme Court of Canada decides to support a verdict, it’s the end of the legal process. No further appeals can come forward. And all existing publication bans are lifted.

Not in the Pickton case. The trial judge, James Williams, recently decided to keep a publication ban on the name of the woman who fought for her life in 1997 when Pickton tried to handcuff her after taking her to his farm. Both of them nearly died in their fight ; she stabbed him and he stabbed her.

There could be a change this Friday, August 13, to the last remaining publication bans that still hang over the Robert Pickton case.

This is the North Fraser Pre-Trial in Port Coquitlam and less than a mile away from his farm. By now he is probably in a federal prison like the Kingston Penitentiary in Ontario, where his fellow serial killer Paul Bernardo has been living for many years.

In spite of the Supreme Court’s recent decision to uphold Robert Pickton’s guilty verdict, publication bans remain on a great deal of evidence heard during the three stages of Pickton’s legal procedures: the preliminary hearing in 2003, the voir dire in 2005 and the trial itself in 2007. The most controversial of these bans is that of the name ofContinue Reading

It’s been all-Pickton all the time but I’m taking a brief break for what I hope is my second (and last) Oliphant Commission post. In Part 1 I told you about being subpoenaed by the Oliphant Commission; now I’d like to share the letter my lawyer, Brendan Van Niejenhuis, wrote to Nancy Brooks, one ofContinue Reading