DULF trial ends, but no decision expected soon
Post Facto: RCMP set home on fire. AI racism in prisons? ICE & Raytheon deals. Compassion club fights eviction. Reform towards wards thwarts restored board.
The anxious waiting continues for Drug User Liberation Front co-founders Jeremy Kalicum and Eris Nyx.
The trial has closed in their constitutional challenge of the charges of possession for the purposes of trafficking for DULF's compassion club. Prosecution and defence lawyers made their final arguments over the last two weeks in the BC Supreme Court in downtown Vancouver.
But Kalicum and Nyx will still have to wait months — likely to January 2027 — to hear a final decision from Justice Catherine Murray.
“I don’t want you to be waking up every day thinking, ‘Is this the day [the decision will come]?’” Murray told Nyx and Kalicum in court on Friday.
“I know how long you’ve been waiting for federal court,” she added in a nod to DULF’s judicial review of Health Canada’s denial of their exemption to run their compassion club. That case was heard in March 2024, and the judge presiding over the case still hasn’t made a decision well over two years later.
Murray convicted Nyx and Kalicum in November last year of the possession-for-trafficking charges (which stem from a 2023 police raid), leading to their application to find those charges unconstitutional.
“This obviously is a huge decision, and there’s a lot to consider. And it matters,” Murray said.
She acknowledged that Kalicum is applying for medical school, with the application due in October.
Defence lawyer Tim Dickson told the court that if the conviction was overturned due to an unconstitutional finding, it would help with Kalicum’s med school application.
While Murray told them it was unlikely she would have a decision by then, she set the next hearing tentatively for late September.
“With my schedule the way it is, I can’t promise anything. But schedules change,” she said. “I will give you my word that I will get to this as soon as I can. And it won’t take as long as the federal court.”
Coming soon: De Facto will be reporting in more detail on what we heard in the closing arguments.
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