Burnaby49 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2019 11:19 pmThey tend to get upset when the judge (as she's legally empowered to do) makes a not guilty plea on their behalf.
I have no idea what the actual Legal standing is, but I suspect it's better phrased as:
- The Judge is legally required to enter a not guilty plea on the behalf of a defendant in the event a plea is not forthcoming.
My thoughts on why that wording. The Rights and Laws are based around the concepts of:
- Innocent until proven guilty.
- An accused has a right to remain silent.
- An accused has a right to a reasonably speedy resolution of the accusation.
Innocent until proven guilty means basically you are not required to provide a defense unless the Crown has provided sufficient evidence to meet the elements of the crime you are charged with.
Right to remain silent basically means you can't be forced to give evidence against yourself - such as that evidence you might give under torture just to get the torture to stop.
Add in the right to a speedy resolution of the accusation and you get a situation where either:
- The defendant can be declared innocent of wrong-doing simply by not entering in a plea till the (with the recent rulings) 2? year period from the point of charges has elapsed.
or
- A default plea of Not Guilty is entered on behalf of the defendant so the process can move forward.
Logically, if a defendant can completely avoid any kind of trial by simply not pleading: there'd be no criminal trials... no need for prisons because no one would ever be found guilty and therefore would never be sentenced... and since they don't actually do anything productive no need for either Police or Crown Prosecution since the end result of what they do would end up releasing every suspect back into the community without a trial anyway. Which does not make any sense in a civilized Society.
So... the only reasonable option is a Lawful default of a Not Guilty plea. That's my reasoning anyway... I can't say if the default is explicitly encoded in Criminal Law, embodied in Lawful Precedence or just overlooked because it makes such obvious sense to everyone who decides to take even a 10% fair look at the situation.
Edited to add:.... now I get to the further-down post where Burnaby confirms it's a Lawful requirement.