What happened to Maya?

Where is she now and what is she doing?
I don’t know … I just hope she’s not hurting anyone else.

What did happen in the court case was this:

She pleaded Not Guilty. That meant the case took a very long time to come to court. Years. Really – years.

Then on the second day of the trial she switches her plea to Guilty. Could have saved everyone a lot of time and money and anguish, Maya, if you’d just done that in the beginning … it’s not like you had a good chance of ‘getting off’.

Then the court system kicks in and she gets a Conditional Sentence. That means staying at home and being a good girl. That’s the sentence she gets after the court has evidence she has been failing mandated drug tests AND has has been charged with another crime since killing my wife.

Before she killed my wife she had been arrested and charged with Fraud or Theft 9 times! And never did a single day in jail for any of that. And then she kills my wife and still does no time! WTF? Argh!!!

She would have got away with it … if some people in the system hadn’t taken their jobs seriously. And if Maya hadn’t been stupid.

She kept doing drugs. And failing drug tests. But even that was not sufficient to send her to jail! Imagine that: the court mandates drug tests and she fails them and the court still does not have enough to send her to prison. Argh!! If she had not been stupid enough the admit to an official she was doing junk they would have not been able to have do anything about her. And the system still had to work extra hard to marshal the information into a suitable package for use in court. As it was she got stuck inside and was to do the rest of her sentence in prison. She’s likely out by now … hopefully not hurting anyone.

What kind of f*#ked up system is that?

In our province, BC, the justice system has been so mismanaged that they have a problem with the judges – they’ve let the older ones retire and not brought enough new ones up so there’s not enough of them. (see Vancouver Sun Opinion piece or CBC piece) And people charged with serious crimes are going free because their cases took too long to come to court! The Lawyers are now starting a withdrawal of duty-counsel services because the gov’t is not funding that.

If you drive drunk and kill someone you should face a court case but apparently one of the cases bypassed by the system was just that. Someone died because of someone else’s bad choices and that killer walked away free. If the friends and family of the dead take justice into their hands it’s a good bet the system will find time for them …

And to add insult to injury: For the last few years there has been a major court case pending that involved two high-up civil servants. The case looked like it would become a bigger case involving corruption at the highest levels in the Billion Dollar sale of a public railroad to a private company. What eventually happened was that after years of fighting the two defendants suddenly switched their pleas to Guilty and the government agreed to pay their $6 million legal bill! And the gov’t says it won’t force them to sell their half-million dollar homes to pay any costs! Why is that?

Argh!!
They pled guilty – my tax dollars should not pay a cent towards their legal issues. They’re criminals for cripes sake! And worse is the fact that the people almost everyone suspects would have been facing the music in court (had these two been allowed to testify) are the same people that get to make this deal – and buy the silence of these two criminals with my tax dollars … that really sucks. Sucks dollars out of my wallet and puts it in the hands of lawyers and … criminals.

When a cop in Vancouver does something wrong they no longer let the Vancouver Police investigate – they bring in another police force to do that. Why? Because experience has shown us that for many reasons a police force should not be put in that position – investigating itself. Many would not trust the results and many would never be 100% sure that some sort of whitewash has not happened. Many, many jurisdictions have gone this route – another force investigates.

So why do we let members of the Provincial Cabinet (Premiere and Minister of Justice) make a decision to pay such big bills to criminals when they or their departments might be the target of investigations and possibly face charges? Isn’t that a conflict of interest?

How is it they can get away with this?

And now they say there will be a ‘review’ of the $6 Million payout. By the same people and department that crafted the deal in the first place!! Crap! Bullshit! Don’t believe it? Read this column by one of our province’s best political journalists, Mike Smyth.

Think about what I’ve covered in this post: The government is screwing the justice system by cutting and cutting because they say the money is tight and yet they have no problems spending millions of tax dollars helping white collar criminals pay their legal bills.

Can the public say anything here? Is there any recourse? Can we divert the bill back to the party in place? Answer: Nope.

The next time a politician (or party flack) says they are accountable … ask them if that means they’ll cover the costs of bad decisions or stupid mistakes. Of course they won’t. So when they say they are accountable … they’re lying to you.