Canada v. Schmidt
| Canada v Schmidt | |
|---|---|
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| Hearing: December 18, 1985 Judgment: May 14, 1987 |
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| Full case name | Helen Susan Schmidt v. Her Majesty The Queen in Right of Canada, the United States of America and the Attorney General for Ontario |
| Citations | [1987] 1 S.C.R. 500, 61 O.R. (2d) 530, 28 C.R.R. 280, 58 C.R. (3d) 1, 20 O.A.C. 161 |
| Docket No. | 18343 |
| Prior history | Judgment for the Crown in the Court of Appeal for Ontario. |
| Ruling | Appeal dismissed. |
| Holding | |
| Rules concerning double jeopardy in Canada do not apply to foreign states in extradition hearings. | |
| Court Membership | |
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Chief Justice: Brian Dickson Puisne Justices: Jean Beetz, Willard Estey, William McIntyre, Julien Chouinard, Antonio Lamer, Bertha Wilson, Gerald Le Dain, Gérard La Forest |
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| Reasons given | |
| Majority | La Forest J., joined by Dickson C.J. and Beetz, McIntyre, and Le Dain JJ. |
| Concurrence | Lamer J. |
| Concurrence | Wilson J. |
| Estey and Chouinard JJ. took no part in the consideration or decision of the case. | |
Canada v Schmidt, [1987] 1 S.C.R. 500, is a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada on the applicability of fundamental justice under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms on extradition. While fundamental justice in Canada included a variety of legal protections, the Court found that in considering the punishments one might face when extradited to another country, only those that "shock the conscience" would breach fundamental justice.
The defendant was a Canadian citizen named Helen Susan Schmidt, who along with her son Charles Gress and his friend Paul Hildebrand had kidnapped a young girl in Cleveland, Ohio. Schmidt claimed to believe the girl was her granddaughter and that the girl's biological mother kept her in a home ill suited for a child. Helen Schmidt then lived with the girl for two years in New York City before her arrest in 1982. She was charged with kidnapping (a federal offence in the United States) and with child-stealing (an offence in Ohio). That same year she was acquitted of kidnapping, but she fled to Canada before her state trial commenced. She was captured in Ontario and was prepared to be extradited.
While being charged for child-stealing after having been acquitted of kidnapping would not violate the double jeopardy clause in the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, as the states are not bound by this amendment, Schmidt fought the extradition as a violation of double jeopardy rights under section 11(h) of the Canadian Charter.
The majority decision was written by Justice Gerard La Forest. After the Supreme Court found it had jurisdiction to review the case, it considered whether extradition law aside from Charter law was violated. Under extradition law, a hearing in Canada would ascertain if there was sufficient evidence of a crime that could be criminal in Canada as well as in the other nation. It was argued that the extradition hearing should guard against double jeopardy, since this was an essential right in Canadian law. However, the hearing is not a trial, and the Supreme Court decided that arguments about double jeopardy are a defence that would be more suited for a trial. The case Re Burley (1865) was cited to demonstrate that Canada should trust the receiving country to carry out the trial.
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