Pros And Cons Of Feeney Warrant

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Well to begin what is a Feeney warrant, it essentially gives police the power to enter a dwelling house to arrest or apprehend a person if they are in or believed to be in the dwelling house. On 30 October 1997, Criminal Code amendments in the form of Bill C-16 were introduced and given first reading. The amendment provided a mechanism for peace officers to obtain prior judicial authorization to enter a dwelling house for the purposes of making an arrest(Marilyn Pilon, 2000), this happened as a response to this case. So the police, during a murder investigation in 1991, entered the accused house which was an equipment trailer, without permission from Mr Feeney. When they received no answer at the door, they entered, woke Michael by touched …show more content…

So here it is the negatives and positives, to begin with in my opinion there is no negatives to this section of the criminal code. But this power could be overused or misused in some case as can other powers the police have at their disposal. Telewarrants take away the face to face aspect of retrieving the warrant; therefore the judge issuing the warrant is unable to make an assessment for himself based of the situation, but only on the ward of the officer. Also having that meeting with the officer who needs the warrant gives the judge a chance to size him up or make a judgement on whether the officer has a proper reason to require a warrant. Parliament chose “impracticable” to signal a restrictive application: telewarrants were intended for situations where a personal application would border on the impossible (Marvin Stern, David Albert and Martina Quail, 2007).
Here are a few examples in which telewarrants were used correctly and incorrectly. In Erickson the accused was charged with marijuana production, evidence of which was found before the telewarrant was issued to search the residence. In a unanimous decision, the court upheld the trial judge’s holding that the warrant was validly issued as it was impracticable for the officer to drive 30 kilometres through “rugged unorganized territory” to the nearest justice qualified to issue a

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