I don’t usually blog about overseas judgments, but as I’ve just come back from North America, I thought I would share the humour of the Court of Appeal of Alberta in R v Pelech, 2012 ABCA 134 at [2]:
At about 2:00 a.m. on December 6, 2009, an Edmonton police officer noticed a Jeep leaving the parking lot of a drinking establishment with its lights out. He decided to follow it. As he did, he observed the vehicle drive through three stop signs without attempting to brake. A licence check revealed that the licence plate attached to the vehicle was not registered to it. The officer attempted to stop the Jeep by activating the emergency lights of his marked police car. The driver of the Jeep took no notice of it. The police officer then activated his vehicle’s siren intermittently, but again there was no response. Next, the officer pulled his vehicle alongside the Jeep and shone what was described as an “alley light” into the driver’s compartment of the Jeep. That caught the driver’s attention. The Jeep was brought to a stop. Immediately, the respondent emerged from the driver’s seat of the Jeep and approached the police car declaring: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so fucked.” As will be seen from our disposition of this appeal, that was a prophetic statement.
Creative commons acknowledgment for the photograph.
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