No Legal Way Out
R v Ryan, Domestic Abuse, and the Defence of Duress
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An RCMP sting caught Nicole Doucet (Ryan) trying to hire a hitman to kill her ex-husband. It was supposed to be an open-and-shut case. It wasn't.
No Legal Way Out details the judicial process, media coverage, and legal implications of R v Ryan. Appealed up to the Supreme Court of Canada, Doucet's initial acquittal - on the basis of duress in the context of abuse - was overturned, but a stay of proceedings meant that she could not be tried again. The court castigated the RCMP for not protecting her, prompting a one-sided investigation that ultimately exonerated the force and garnered substantial critical media attention for Doucet.
R v Ryan limited the legal options for women seeking to escape abuse and had a profoundly negative impact on public perceptions of domestic violence. This unabashedly feminist analysis explains why the court, the police, and the media let down all women trapped by intimate partner terrorism.
About this Author
Nadia Verrelli is an associate professor of political science at Laurentian University. She is the author of numerous articles and book chapters and editor of The Role of the Policy Advisor: An Inside Look, Canada: The State of the Federation, 2011 - The Changing Federal Environment: Rebalancing Roles? and The Democratic Dilemma: Reforming Canada's Supreme Court. Lori Chambers is a professor of gender and women's studies at Lakehead University. She is the author of Married Women and Property Law in Victorian Ontario and Misconceptions: Unmarried Motherhood and the Ontario Children of Unmarried Parents Act, 1921-1969, both winners of the Alison Prentice Award in Ontario women's history. She is also the author of A Legal History of Adoption in Ontario, 1921-2015.
Reviews
I highly recommend this well-written, well-referenced, and accessible book as a must-read for the legal profession. No Legal Way Out should be part of the curriculum for law, women's studies, sociology, and other academic programs that deal with domestic abuse.
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