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Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

2020

Law Enforcement and Corrections

Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University

Undercover Operations

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Mr. Big And The New Common Law Confessions Rule: Five Years In Review, Adelina Iftene, Vanessa Kinnear Jan 2020

Mr. Big And The New Common Law Confessions Rule: Five Years In Review, Adelina Iftene, Vanessa Kinnear

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The Supreme Court of Canada released its decision of R v Hart in July of 2014. The decision provided a two-prong framework for assessing the admissibility of confessions obtained through the undercover police tactic known as “Mr. Big”. The goal of the framework was to address reliability concerns, to protect suspects from state abuse, and to reduce the risk of wrongful convictions. The first prong of the test created a new common law evidentiary rule, under which Mr. Big obtained confessions are now presumptively inadmissible. The second prong revamped the existing abuse of process doctrine.

In this article, the authors …