The break continues, and a bit on the law

We’ve just been told that court will now resume at 3:30 p.m. ET, not 2:30 p.m. as we were originally told.

For anyone wondering, this is completely normal. One of the things with trials is that there can be a lot of downtime for the jurors, while lawyers and the judge discuss legal matters outside of their presence. That also means the media can’t report what is said.

Although this case has lots of publicity because of the high public profile of the five accused men, all of the publication bans and the inability to report what’s said outside of the presence of the jury are standard in Canadian law.

For example, the publication ban on the name of the complainant in this case, E.M., is mandatory under the Criminal Code. The same is the case for media not being able to report anything said outside the presence of the jury. If you want to know more about publication bans in Canada, check out this link.