The jury acquitted Ruzic and the federal Crown appealed. The mother whose child is abducted or Ms. Ruzic who lives where the police cannot help her or her mother, or the battered spouse who cannot leave her abusive relationship, do not have a realistic choice but to commit a criminal offence, even though the threatened harm is not immediate and the threatener is not present when the offence is committed. In dismissing a further Crown appeal, Justice LeBel ruled that statutory defences are not owed special deference by reviewing courts. Although legislation has a presumption of constitutionality, statutory defences do not warrant more deference simply because they are the product of difficult moral judgments. The entire body of criminal law expresses a myriad of policy choices.
Statutory offences are every bit as concerned with social values as statutory defences.
He went on to agree with Justice Laskin s conclusions on the issue of moral involuntariness, which he said does not negate the actus reus or mens rea of an offence, but like physical involuntariness deserves protection under s. 7 of the Charter. As to whether s. 17 s immediacy and presence requirements infringed the principle of fundamental justice, Justice LeBel found that the meaning of s. 17 was too restrictive in requiring the threatener to be present. The section seems tailor-made for the situation in which a person is compelled to commit an offence at gunpoint, he wrote. And he agreed with Justice Laskin that the immediacy and presence criteria would not meet the proportionality branch of the s.1 analysis. Justice LeBel said he preferred to ground the partial striking down of s. 17 on the fundamental principle that criminal liability should not be ascribed to physically or morally involuntary behaviour.