By Tony Gosgnach
TORONTO, November 4, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The trial for longtime pro-life demonstrator Linda Gibbons on a charge of disobeying a court order will be held in Room 504 of the Ontario Court of Justice at College Park in downtown Toronto this coming Jan. 12.
Gibbons is pleading not guilty to the charge, which was laid after she was arrested outside the Scott “Clinic” abortion site in downtown Toronto on Oct. 8. The trial date was set after a series of recent court appearances that included a stint in Mental Health Court, because of her practice of remaining voluntarily mute out of solidarity with voiceless preborn human beings.
Legal officials say Gibbons will not now be entitled to a jury trial, as first hoped. Evidently the Criminal Code was recently changed to allow for prosecution of a charge of disobeying a court order on either a summary or indictable basis, at the discretion of the Crown. Previously, such a charge could be pursued only on an indictable basis, thus providing the accused with the option of having a jury trial in every instance.
The Crown in the Gibbons case is proceeding on a summary basis, which carries a maximum penalty of six months in prison and no opportunity for a jury trial. Conviction on an indictable basis would have carried a stiffer maximum penalty of two years in prison, but it would also have provided a jury trial option.
The development is the latest in a campaign that has seen the Crown charge Gibbons exclusively with obstructing a peace officer throughout her 14 years of challenging court-imposed bubble zones prohibiting pro-life activity around certain Toronto abortion sites. However, on Sept. 30, a provincial court judge ruled that Gibbons’s silent and peaceful conduct could in no way constitute obstruction. That decision seemed to have necessitated the laying of a new kind of criminal charge.
A “temporary” court injunction establishing bubble zones around some abortion sites was imposed in 1994 and unprecedentedly remains in force today. This, despite the fact that a judge in 1998 had suggested the injunction was already outdated at that point.
Gibbons remains in custody at the Vanier Centre for Women in Milton.