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ONTARIO. PROVINCIAL COURT JUDGES
The Honourable Mr. Justice Monte Harris
Old City Hall
Ontario Court of Justice
For judges, one of the highest forms of professional recognition is to establish precedent-setting decisions, and by this standard, judge Monte Harris is among the most notable members of the Ontario bench. Trouble is, many of those decisions turn out to be wrong, and Harris is notable specifically for the frequency with which his rulings get overturned by the Ontario Court of Appeal.
Moreover, according to defence lawyers who have appeared before him, Harris has a reputation for acting with apparent kindness toward defendants during the course of some trials, only to pull out the rug at the very end and hand down an unexpected conviction or a particularly harsh sentence. "In my respectful opinion, there is no one who is worse," says one Toronto lawyer.
Even Harris' acts of leniency toward defendants have on occasion stirred up controversy. In 1996, for example, he dismissed assault charges against a man who allegedly beat up his spouse. The woman failed to appear for the trial, and Harris opted not to reschedule it.
But it later became known that when police officers went to her home to deliver a trial notice, she was not there because she was in hiding from the man. She claimed that she never knew about the trial. Moreover, when the man failed to show up for the original first trial date, some 27 court appearances earlier, he had been granted a new trial date.