What is Justice For Some is Injustice For Others

Millie Augustine

Caroline was speaking from the perspective of life on the reserve, I am a Bill C-31. I made a decision a few weeks back and it was a very hard decision for me to make. It wasn't hard, I was scared. I guess when you work so hard for so many years for something, and you finally achieve it and then you realize you can't follow it, is scary. I decided to quit practising law. I couldn't handle it. And I am not here to talk because the criminal code is written this way, it has nothing to do with what is written in the books. I am here to tell you some examples of major problems that I encountered.

The time I went to law school I had this naive belief that there was justice out there and that you just needed to get into the justice world and practice law and then I would be able to help by people with regards to the injustices. Wow, was I ever dreaming. When I was in law school I realized something right away - the politics in law school. This is amazing and it really surprised me. I spoke to some professors about it and they told me just to get through law school because it would be different once I started practising. Yeah, it was different - it was worse!

While I was articling at this law firm, and the people that I articled with were fantastic, I had an opportunity to really travel with one of my bosses. Most articling students do research and nothing else, but with me I was in court almost everyday. And even prior to going to law school I did a lot of volunteer work with the federal penitentiaries, so I was aware with regards to a lot of the criminal aspects of what was going on out there. In the examples that I will be giving you I use my people because a lot of them come to see me. But I have handled cases of natives and non-natives and they are going through the same system and encounter the same problems. But with the natives, I found that they encountered it a lot more times.

After I started practising I realized that there was something wrong with the system. I would question lawyers, is it me? Am I going crazy? It got to the point in the last five or six months that I even went to see a doctor and asked if he could refer me to a psychiatrist because I thought I was going crazy. I keep on coming back to the same conclusion that what is missing in the justice system is common sense - there is no common sense. And I realized another thing - the law is there to control the poor, protect the rich, the government and the politicians. I have seen it time and time and time again. I have heard lawyers make the same comments behind closed doors, but they wouldn't dare go public with it because they would lose their jobs or clientele, and so on.

I looked at it and said, I have a choice: to be able to practice law and be a professional or follow my moral belief. And I realized to be a professional meant not having personal feelings about anything. And I fought with that and they said, "as long as you fight with the legal aspects, you will never become a professional person." And I went to law school thinking also that maybe I could change the system. But once I got in there I realized no, it's impossible. There are so many rules and regulations that you feel like you've been suffocated. You cannot move. You move in any way and you are going to be disbarred.

In the courts, all lawyers have a professional responsibility, then you have the rules of the court, rules of evidence. It's so tight that it gives you no place to manoeuvre, to move in any way. It seemed like I was getting suffocated by the system. It got to the point that I hated myself. It got to the point I said, "Who am I?". I'm turning into this monster. I don't like this person. I couldn't even stand facing myself. So finally, I woke up one morning and I said "what am I doing?". I'm a human being before anything else. My career, that's next in line but first I'm a human being.

I don't care what system you're in. They're not going to turn me into something I'm not. I'm not going to turn into a machine and that is what they expect us to do. Some people fit into it, that's fine, but it's not for me. I cannot become a machine. I still care about what happens out there. When I see people out there really getting screwed by the system, (and I've seen it very frequently), I have to speak out. They tell me, "mind your own business and keep your mouth shut". I can't do it.

You go in the court system, (I found this quite amazing), you have the judge up there and you have the prosecutor and a defence counsellor. The victim and the accused are in the back. Two complete strangers talking about somebody's life as if they were brought up with them. They don't know anything about them. They don't know how they feel inside. And it's a game, who can out argue the other and follow the procedures. I've spent so much time trying to follow the procedures, trying to remember what they were, I forgot what the case was about. The procedures are so stupid. There is no common sense that you can apply to them. Also, if you want to go to court of appeal, if you have your factum with a gray cover, you have a green cover lets say, the court of appeal won't hear it. You've got all these fancy procedures. I said "stick 'em", I don't want them anymore.

More than anything else, there is a lot of misguidance by the media. There is one thing I noticed the media never covers. Go to court, let me use this as an example. You have the accused sitting there and you have the victim. But at this point in time, they're focussing on the accused. Nobody pays attention to the victim. They are completely forgotten about. The prosecutor says, "I want to get that guy" and that's all there is to it. Now the plea bargaining comes into the picture. What you never hear about are the victims of the political system. In reality, like in the media they'll say they're the accused. They're the accused, they've been charged with a crime.

In regards to plea bargaining, I'll give you some examples of the victims of the political system. I know one guy that was charged with 11 charges. The prosecutor has to somehow try and find this man guilty. That's his job. If he doesn't do his job, the politicians and the government people will say that he's not a very good lawyer and we have to boot him out and put somebody else in there. It's a sad situation. This guy had some serious charges and some petty charges. Sometimes you can do one act and charge him for six different charges later on. The guy admitted and said, "Yes, I'm guilty on three of them, but the other one's I'm not." The prosecutor said, "Look, I'll give you a deal. You plead guilty to all eleven charges and we'll only give you one year. However, if we try each one individually by trial..." And I told him, you've got quite a few weak cases here and they're going to get thrown. He said, "That's true. But they are three of them that we do not have much of a defence for." And the guy admitted them. He said, "We'll go through the trial and we're going to sentence him on each one and he'll get six to eight years. So therefore, I call it blackmail but they call it plea bargaining. They said, "plead guilty to these eleven charges", (although he wasn't guilty in a lot of them) "and then you'll only spend one year in jail. Otherwise, you're going to get six to eight years for being found guilty of three charges." That's what they call plea bargaining.

What this young boy doesn't realize is that he has pleaded guilty to the charges and is spending time in jail, but now he has this record for the rest of his life. A record of charges for stuff he did not commit.

I really feel bad about that and, yes, the prosecutors are doing their job. I was taught, however, that their job was to bring out the truth. But no, their job is to put people in jail. There is a difference here.

I find that the biggest problem I have, and like I've said, I've seen it many times, is when you have the law written for the poor. I can give you some examples of when you have victims of the political system. I know of a situation where this gentlemen was charged for sexually assaulting this young girl. This young girl had the hots for him. She had a crush on him and he was a married man. He had a job but he wasn't paid very good. But he was proud of the fact that he wasn't on welfare. She charged him because he wouldn't look at her. She was pretty upset.

The case was quite weak. And even at that point her story was kind of mixed up. She didn't know what she was saying and so on. I went to the prosecutor and said "This man is innocent. I know for a fact that he is innocent because the night that he supposedly sexually abused this girl, he was up in Nova Scotia with me at a meeting. Many people saw him up there." However, this gentlemen had a choice to make because the prosecutor still wouldn't drop the charges. He said, "I have to be able to fight this because that's a serious charge and it's going to cost me a fortune. I don't have much money. I need to be able to feed my family. I just make enough money to be above the line to qualify for legal aid. I can either sell my house and hire a lawyer, in which case my kids won't have a roof over their heads, or I can plead guilty to the charge and they'll probably just put me on probation." This gentlemen did not have a criminal record. I told him, "You're innocent. This is going to go on your record." "Well," he said, "it doesn't give me much choice. I don't have the money."

The prosecutor knew he was innocent because I had some people who were in Nova Scotia call the prosecutor and they said that they would testify that he was up there. But no, this man would be prosecuted anyway. In the long run, he pleaded guilty to it but at this point rumours started spreading and his reputation was ruined. He got fired from his job because of it. His wife left him because after a while she began to believe it, even after I told her that he was up in Nova Scotia. It ruined a man's life. It really ruined this man's life. He took to drinking. He's an alcoholic now and he's lost everything.

I told the prosecutor but he said, "No, I have to try and help the victim." I said, "Look, check her story out". The truth did finally come out that she had lied about it. She made it up because he would not look at her. It was just a crush she had on him. But this man's life is ruined.

Another situation when they go in courts which is a major, major problem is the language barrier they have in courts. In the Richibucto courts, for example, you walk in, you have the judge sitting over there, defence, duty, counsel. They all speak french and English. I don't know why they bother having the interpreter, family court workers. . .everybody who works in that courtroom speaks french and English.

The number one language on my reserve is Micmac. They go into court and there is no interpreter there. I find that a lot of them go into court and plead guilty when they're not guilty on the charge and the cops know it. They say, "Well, if that was a non-native person we'd lay a summary charge. Ah, it's an Indian, indictable. We know damn well that they're going to plead guilty. No question about it." Which they do. A lot of them do. It doesn't matter if they're guilty or not. They can't afford a lawyer and nobody ever tells them about legal aid.

What is more scary is having to get up on the stand and testify. The prosecutor knows that english is their second language and he takes advantage of it. They will tear you apart. No matter how truthful you are they will come out making you look like a liar. A big liar at that. In my reserve, I find that a lot of Native people have a hard time speaking english, a major problem speaking english. You sure can take advantage of that when you know that a person is having a hard time speaking English. You can get them to say just about anything.

Many times Native people have asked for interpreters. 99 per cent of the time they are never there. Then you have the witnesses. "I saw this and that but there is no way in hell that I'm getting up to testify. The prosecutor will crucify me. They'll make me look like a liar, tear me apart, and so on."

Rather than going through the hassle of it, and a lot of them have a really good defence. I was in court just recently and this guy got up and said, "Hey man, I didn't do it, how dare you charge me." He was really upset. And the way he spoke, "Hey man, lay off, you're just bothering me." The prosecutor looked at this guy. At the time the guy didn't know he was the prosecutor, he thought he was the defence lawyer, "Well" the prosecutor said, "You hit this guy didn't you and that's why you're being charged with assault. Did you hit him?" "Yeah." "That means you're guilty." "Oh, okay." When the time came, he got up and pleaded guilty.

What really happened was that it was self defence. But nobody asked the guy that. They asked if he had hit the guy and he was guilty of hitting him. But the other guy had hit him with a baseball bat on his shoulder before that.

There are major, major problems with the language barrier. I believe it was Judge Nicholas who told me a story about this but I encountered the same thing just recently. I just about died. It was very serious but I couldn't help but laugh. Even the judge laughed about it.

This old lady was asked to come and testify about an assault charge. She was a witness to it. She had never been in court before in her life. She was very tiny, always laughing and joking around. She walks into court and she is petrified, she's shaking. I remember that I had to go and help her up to the stand because she was so scared I thought she was going to pass out. She said, "That man's going to put me in jail." "No", I said, "that's only the prosecutor. You're not on trial."

She didn't know what was going on. She looked at the prosecutor and said, "Is that God?" So, she sits down and says, "What's that?" and the prosecutor said, "Oh, that's the Bible." She said, "What's going on here? What are you trying to do? Are you trying to change my religion?"

"No, no. Put your hand on there."

"What for?"

"You've got to swear."

"No, no. I'm not doing it!" I asked myself, "What's going on here?" "I'm not doing it." And she went on and on and finally got up and walked out. So we had to take a break.

I went and talked to her. I asked her, "What's wrong?" She said, "I'm not going to do it." But she wouldn't explain. So I got up there and she said "Okay, if I don't swear, they're going to put me in jail. That's what my granddaughter told me." She puts her hand on the Bible. "Rotten son of a x!#? x!#?, blah, blah, blah." I had heard of situations like that before. I took to laughing. But it shows right there that there is such a language barrier.

Another thing, I know in law school they teach you that when a person is guilty or not guilty, you can tell not just by what they say but by the way they act. Eye contact or the way they move. They say that eye contact shows that they're telling the truth and shows respect. In my community, it's just the opposite. Eye contact is showing disrespect. Especially to an elder, never make eye contact. I've got into the habit of looking at the top of a non-native's head or chin but it is still very hard for me to make eye contact. 

A lot of people sit there in court and they are nervous not because they are lying. It's because they're having a hard time translating their thoughts from Micmac to English. It's extremely hard. I get stuck in court all the time with the simplest language.

I head all the academic language here today and at noon time I was going to run. If Caroline Ennis had not been around I was going to run for sure. Because if you expect to hear it from me, forget it. When I heard Caroline speak, it calmed me down a little bit. I thought, okay, it's fine to speak plain English.

Another thing with the justice system is that it helps create community problems. I had to defend one girl. She and her first cousin got into a fight. They had had a few beer. They were teenagers. It was a fight over a boyfriend. One slapped the other one or something like that. The other one called the police officer and the charges were laid. The accused came to see me and it was an indictable offence. I said, "That's crazy." Later on, the other girl called me up, the so called victim, and said, "Hey, I was drinking when I called the cops. I don't want to press charges against my best friends. She's my best friend, we've been brought up together all our lives and she's my first cousin." But the police wouldn't drop the charges. We went to trial which caused more of a split between the two families and the community. On the reserve, you'll find that everybody is related to one another.

That happened about a year and a half ago. And to this day, the two families are not speaking to each other because of that one event. I tried to get the police to say, "Look, why don't you have a cooling off period." I'm not talking about violence in cases where you have a man beating up a woman. I'm talking about two girls fighting over a guy. The police won't do it.

Also what I find very frequently, (I'm not sure if it's the laziness of the police officers or what it is), but I've seen it very frequently to natives and non-natives. It's this thing about charging summary versus indictable. Summary you have to charge within six months. And because they didn't do the investigation in time, all of a sudden the time shows up and they're being charged the indictable. A more serious charge. But you look at the disclosure, and you say, "You don't even have a case here let alone a summary. Why did you go indictable?" "Oh, the six months ran out so we decided to go indictable."

It has nothing to do with justice. They say, "Look, the cops didn't' have time to investigate." This is really, really crazy. Let me tell you something about the victims of the political system. I had a situation which I found shocking. There was a young boy on a native reserve. Because of politics, the family didn't vote for the right Chief, they opposed the Chief. The Chief has been doing a lot of stuff. One of the things he's been doing is he cut this young boy's welfare cheque off in February. March went by, April. He's got no food in his house, he had to shoot his dog because he couldn't afford to buy extra food for him, and the dog food that was left over, he ate it. No income what so ever. They said you have to work for your welfare in the woods but there was no real compensation for this work. He earned $80 per week working in the woods cutting pulp and so on. Yet, other people did not have to do it. But the chief had put down that law.

He decided to move into the band office in protest. That was a no-no. He had lost over twenty pounds at this point in time. He called me up and I called Indian Affairs and I said "Look, you mean to tell me that this chief. . ." They said, "It's an internal matter." I said, "This boy is going to starve to death. You mean to tell me that you've given so much power to the Chief, an elected body, that they can determine whether a person lives or dies." "It's an internal matter." So I told them where they could go.

There is no appeal process for native people. You've got to remember that. You've got the ombudsmen, you've got the labour board, even human rights. I learned my lesson a long time ago. Native people do not have the same rights as non-natives when it comes to dealing with the Human Rights Commission in Halifax. I've had many bad experiences with that.

Anyway, time went on and he moved into the band office and he was very cooperative with the police officers. He had called the Chief up a couple of days before and says, "If you don't start giving me a welfare cheque, I'm going to move into the band office." The Chief threatened his life, he was going to blow his brains out. He called the police and they said, "We'll investigate." While he's in the band office, the police officers take him to the hospital to make sure he's all there. The doctor says he's fine so they bring him back. Dealing with a social worker everything is fine. He makes an off-hand comment, something to the effect of "What if I was to go after the Chief? At least I'd be in a federal penitentiary. I'd have a roof over my head, I'd have three square meals a day. And maybe I can get training while I'm in there." That same night, they recommended that he quit protesting so that he'd be able to deal with the chief. That's fine. So he moves out on the recommendation of the police officers.

Next morning, his parents get a phone call asking them to get their son down to the police station at one o'clock that afternoon. That's fine. He gets down to the police station and they place him under arrest for uttering death threats against the Chief. So he's being charged. He's put in jail to have a bail hearing the next day. In the meantime I asked what happened to the Chief who had threatened to blow his brains out. He's got guns in his house and so on.

He goes to court and so on. About three weeks later this young boy calls me up and he says, "The police officer that investigated just showed up and he said that no charges are going to be laid against the chief." I said, "Why not?" The police officer said that their was no one to corroborate the story that the Chief threatened him on the phone. I said, "That's strange. From my community, on the reservation I'm from, last year we had some people being threatened and there was nobody to corroborate their story and they were charged with an indictable offence of threatening a person. Are you telling me that each district has a different law?"

I could understand in some ways this young boy being charged if this was a summary. But here they refused to charge the Chief, he had access to guns and everything else in his home, he had uttered a death threat. This boy makes an off-hand comment to a social worker, he doesn't have any guns or any access to them and so on, and they put him in jail. To make it even worse, it's the same type of death threat yet one is charged because he's poor. The other person was not charged because of the title in front of his name.

In my community last year, people were charged for uttering threats even when there was nobody to corroborate the story. Why would it be any different in this case? Because of the word "Chief". If you have any title in front of your name, you're all set. I said, "You proved to me again that the law is there to control the poor." But the politicians and government people, elected bodies and so on, they're above the law because apparently that criminal code that's written there is not applicable to that Chief because he is an elected body.

I was shocked. I started to raise a stink about it. Someone told me to calm down, I had to be a professional person. This went on and finally one day I heard that same comment, "You have to be a professional person", and I thought to myself, "I'm getting the hell out of here before I become a professional." Like I said before, being a professional is like being a machine. I don't ever want to be a professional if that's what it takes. To take my moral beliefs. I say wrong is wrong. I don't care what anybody says. You can turn around and have a fancy word for it. You can carve it any way you want. You can make excuses. But I was brought up to believe that wrong is wrong. And it was a choice between practising law and my moral beliefs and I said I'll go with my moral beliefs any day. Because my soul is not for sale. Everybody said, "You're crazy." Everybody has been telling my family, "Put her in the crazy house. Look at the money she could be making."

Yeah, but can I sleep at night time? Can I sleep at night time? You know, when I look at the pollution aspects, I believe whole heartedly with what's going on. I found out that there is a difference between criminal law and civil law. Civil law is there to protect the corporations. They get a fine. You do the same thing and you'll get charged criminally. And I think that there is something wrong with this country when we turn around and have two different laws for two different groups.

When you have people in courts and they say these are the charges, they may come out and say more crimes are being committed, not necessarily. They might be pleading guilty to more charges but they might be guilty of only one. The other ones they're pleading guilty to because they don't have the funding and legal aid, it's not the legal aid's fault here. I think it's excellent that at least there is something there but not enough money is put in there. The poor cannot afford the lawyers. Look at the big shots going to court and walking away from a lot of things because they have the money. Is this what our country is turning into? That money is the ultimate answer? You can buy your way out of jail and so on. We can complain about it forever but we have to go out and do something. I see many innocent people out there. They are poor and right away they are being punished for being poor. A lot of people are going to jail because they don't have the money to prove that they are innocent.

There are real criminals out there, I agree. But there are also victims of the political system. Nobody ever comes out and admits that. You'll never here other lawyers agreeing to that. They'll say that you're either the accused or the victim. That's not so. There is a middle person in there. There is a group in there which, I would say, over 50 per cent that appear in court are those victims of the political system. A Chief or an elected body can come after you because you won't kiss their butt. They will focus on you. They'll find something to blame you with. Once you're targeted, you're dead meat.

By yourself, you have no power to fight the government. It's almost impossible. I've come across some situations with this in Jemseg. Everybody thinks it's a big thing and so on. Well what you don't realize is that they've been doing this sacrilege thing, digging up the dead, for many years; endangering the health of the people here because they are doing it without health permits. They are breaking the law left and right. "Take us to court." There are things happening and they say, "Take us to court." They know that we don't have the money to take them to court so they continue on doing a lot of this illegal stuff. They have broken every act that they have come up with. I've looked at different acts in regards to burial places and they've broken so many of them. They created their own acts and they break them.

But who cares? We can't stop them unless we work together as one voice. They are saying that we don't matter. The corporations are the ones that matter and the government people. Well remember something, in numbers, they are the minority. They might have the money but we'll never be part of them if you keep in mind that wrong is wrong and your soul can't be bought. Just keep that in mind and I think you'll do all right for yourselves.

Thank you.

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© 2007 Atlantic Human Rights Centre, St. Thomas University