I have a bunch of students, some of whom are Canadian.
In Aus (where I am) and most Commonwealth countries, when an appellate court overturns a conviction, the language used is ‘quashing’ the conviction. That is the formal order of the court that sets the conviction aside.
Two of my students (can’t yet tell if they are Canadian ones) have used in an assignment what to me is unusual language to describe this event - they talk about ‘suppressing’ the conviction. I tried to google this, but all I found were endless references to suppression orders about the identity of various parties in courts. I have found plenty of examples of the use of the expression ‘quashing’ a conviction in Canada, but that doesn’t exclude the possible informal use of suppression as an alternative descriptor.
I am trying to decide if the odd use of language is suspicious or if it is explicable on the basis that perhaps Canadians are using their local jargon. The only context in which I have come across the use of suppression as jargon is, as above, when identity is suppressed, or, in the US, where evidence is suppressed (we would say ‘excluded’).
I wouldn’t use “suppressed” in that situation. I would use terms like “the conviction was quashed” or “the conviction was set aside”. Can’t speak for the entire Canadian legal profession, but that’s the terminology I’d likely use.
I don’t think we would use “suppressed” in the evidential sense, either. I’d be more likely to say “the evidence was not admissible” (if it didn’t meet the evidential rules for admissibility eg hearsay), or “the evidence was excluded” (if it met the evidential rules but was excluded for a policy ground eg breach of a Charter right).
Noel, if you want something a bit more definitive than “some Canadian bloke on the internet”, you could go to the LEXUM website, which publishes the SCC decisions, and search for “suppress”. I tried it just now, and didn’t get any hits for “suppress” in the context of setting aside a decision on appeal, and the only usages of “suppress” meaning to exclude evidence were a few quotations from some American cases, where that term is used in that way.
And just to double-check, in case you’ve got some francophones in the mix, I searched the French versions of the decisions for “supprimer”, the French equivalent to “suppress”. No hits in the sense of quashing a conviction.
Is it possible that the students are simply using a word that in some senses can be a synonym in this particular case?
As I said, in the American context, we talk about “quashing a subpoena,” and “vacating a judgment” but if someone said “vacating a subpoena” and “quashing a judgment,” I could easily understand why. Unless we were doing something that demanded the precise term, I’d either just let it slide or say “I understand what you mean, but for your information, the precise legal term is X.”
Well, that meaning of “suppress” isn’t showing up at all in the SCC decisions, or as an alternative. It’s used more in the sense of “suppressing conditions that lead to crime”, “suppression of hate speech” and so on.
IANAL, so Piper knows better. But it seems to me the news always reports the situation as “the conviction was overturned on appeal” or “The conviction was set aside”.
Right, when one student uses an uncommon phrasing, it doesn’t mean anything. When multiple students use the same uncommon phrasing, it sometimes means that there’s more collaboration going on than there should be.
I’d want more than just one shared uncommon word before I took it any further, but different teachers will have different standards.
My immediate thought was that ‘suppress’ could mean the conviction was set aside (quashed) but the original charge stands. So the prosecution could retry the case if they wanted to. Essentially the appeal has clarified the law and sent the case back to be reheard. That happens.
Just for clarity, some successful appeals leave the prosecutor with nowhere to go. A crime has occurred but there isn’t a case against anyone.
Still, it seems like plagiarism or perhaps the purchase of the answer from a third party is the real answer.