Stanley\u2019s lawyer, Scott Spencer, opened the trial by stating that Stanley and his son, who was also on the farm that day, were not \u201clooking for trouble\u201d when the grey SUV pulled up. Stanley didn\u2019t have the luxury of waiting for police to arrive on his isolated farm, counsel argued. He said the case wasn\u2019t a defence of property case, nor was it a self-defence case. In fact, \u201cthis is really not a murder case at all,\u201d Spencer said in court according to the trial transcript. Instead, \u201cthis is a case about what can go terribly wrong when you create a situation which is in the nature of a home invasion.\u201d Stanley and his family \u201cfaced, essentially, intruders,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have to look at it from Gerry [Stanley]\u2019s perspective, what he thought when he was faced with this sudden invasion. The fear, the unknown.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spencer acknowledged that the young people were not on trial, but \u201cthey created this panic situation.\u201d Spencer said it was \u201creasonable\u201d to fire warning shots at intruders who were trying to steal and who were crashing into the Stanleys\u2019 vehicle to \u201cget them to just leave.\u201d The defence\u2019s version of the story emphasizes the wrongful nature of Boushie and his friends\u2019 entry onto Stanley\u2019s land \u2014 in other words, their trespass.<\/p>\n
What does \u201ctrespass\u201d mean?<\/strong><\/p>\n Trespass is a concept in both criminal and civil law in Canada. As described in the 1959 New Brunswick Court of Appeal ruling in Mann v Saulnier<\/em>, trespass means \u201cthe act of entering upon land, in the possession of another\u2026without the legal right to do so.\u201d Trespass laws are aimed at the \u201cprotection of possession\u201d and control over the use of private land through the creation of a legal remedy to compensate for the invasion of one\u2019s land, even when no damage is done to the property. While the Criminal Code has trespass provisions, criminal trespass applies in only very narrow circumstances, and not to the actions of Boushie and his friends that day. Criminal trespass<\/a> is committed only when a person \u201cloiters\u201d or \u201cprowls\u201d near a dwelling house, at night, on someone else\u2019s property and without lawful excuse. In a case called Frey v. Fedoruk<\/a><\/em>, <\/em>the Supreme Court has confirmed that criminal trespass was not intended to criminalize \u201cbare trespass not amounting to an actual breach of the peace.\u201d<\/p>\n Most provinces have laws creating penalties for trespass. Saskatchewan\u2019s Trespass to Property Act<\/a><\/em> provides for police arrest powers and fines for entry onto private land without an owner\u2019s consent. <\/em>The Act was created only 10 years ago, a response to concerns raised largely by farm and rural property owners and allegations of rising intrusion and property crime.<\/p>\n Under Saskatchewan\u2019s trespass law, land must be \u201cenclosed,\u201d either by fencing or natural boundaries, or by oral or written \u201cnotice,\u201d such as a sign. Without notice or enclosure, entry onto private property is not considered to be trespass until a request to leave has been made by the occupier and the person entering the premises has failed to leave. The owner must give a trespasser time to comply. The Stanley farm was not enclosed with a fence. The youth were not asked to leave the farm before the shooting began. Muddy shoe prints and a pair of shoes found in the long driveway suggested that some of the youth tried running away after the shooting began.<\/p>\n The Act also requires that police be notified to enforce the arrest provisions or penalties. Stanley did not call the police until after firing his gun and killing Boushie. Had he done so, the police could have imposed a maximum fine of $2,000 for entry onto the land.<\/p>\n The defence of property <\/strong><\/p>\n Criminal law has long recognized a defence of property, when a land owner has used force to remove a trespasser. However, there are limits: an alleged trespasser must be given time to comply before force is used; a defendant must show that the force could not have been less violent; and the resulting harm must be proportionate to the injury or harm it is intended to prevent. Canadian courts have held that it is unreasonable to use deadly force in defence of property alone. In a 1975 case called R. v. Baxter<\/em>, the Ontario Court of Appeal specifically said that firing at a trespasser is not justifiable. While there is some ambiguity in the case law about the limits on the use of force in defence of property, the Supreme Court in R. v. Gunning<\/a><\/em> found that a person could be justified in intentionally killing a trespasser only when they could make out a case of self-defence.<\/p>\n Stanley did not raise the defence of property, even though language like \u201chome invasion,\u201d \u201ctrespass\u201d and \u201cintruder\u201d was part of his story. Had the defence been raised, Stanley would have had to justify why he used a gun and shot Boushie in defending his farm, which would have been difficult under the law. Open questions remain as to why the judge did not raise the defence for the jury to consider and why the Crown conceded that firing the gun at all was reasonable in the circumstances. These questions will never be answered since the Crown has decided not to appeal the verdict.<\/p>\n Treaty 6 territory<\/strong><\/p>\n Trespass and the defence of property presume clear title and ownership of land \u2014 an exclusive relationship between a property owner and their land. In our view, the Stanley trial exposes a much more complex set of relations to rural property. We know the Stanley trial took place in Saskatchewan. However, many may not know it also took place in Treaty 6 territory, which encompasses a large area of land used by Indigenous peoples for thousands of years before European arrival.<\/p>\n Indigenous nations have always claimed jurisdiction over the area. Treaty 6 was signed in 1876 among the Cree, Assiniboine, Saulteaux and Dene, on one hand, and the Crown, on the other, but Indigenous laws were not reflected in the written text. In particular, after the signing of the treaty, the Crown divided the land into small reserves for individual First Nations, often distant from the areas that the Indigenous communities had used, and intentionally isolating communities from each other.<\/p>\n The creation of these reserves did not reflect Indigenous conceptions of treaty. Elders argue that there was no \u201ccede and surrender\u201d clause in the treaty, and that there were no words for these concepts in their languages. Obligations within Indigenous law would not allow for relationships to the land to be severed in this way. Rather, the treaty was meant to deal with the \u201cuse\u201d of the land by settlers, as a loan, and was not a sale. The treaty relationship was based on willingness to share the land while maintaining the obligations of First Nations to the land.<\/p>\n The events of 1876 continue to shape Indigenous-Crown relationships today and have specific relevance to the Stanley trial. Treaty 6 includes the Red Pheasant First Nation, where Boushie and his friends lived. But the boundaries of the reserve do not reflect the historical, legal and cultural connections the Red Pheasant First Nation community has to the surrounding territory. At the same time, Saskatchewan, like other parts of Canada, continues to struggle with deeply embedded racist beliefs concerning Indigenous peoples. These beliefs are exacerbated by perceptions that thefts and property damage have increased and that Indigenous people are responsible. Groups like Farmers with Firearms have sprung up in the area to advocate for the armed defence of rural property.<\/p>\n What was agreed to under the treaty remains unsettled, so there are vastly different stories among Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in the area about relationships with, and claims to, the land. Criminal proceedings are not the forum in which the treaty relationship can or should be reconsidered and repaired. However, this does not mean those involved in the criminal justice system can ignore the impact of this crucial contextual background on the matters \u2014 and the lives \u2014 that come before them. Instead, legal actors and decision-makers must be required to attend to how the use of trespass narratives and terminology may compound systemic bias and invite discriminatory beliefs about both Indigenous youth and criminality and the \u201creasonable\u201d fear of White property owners. In this case, the judge could have gone some way to addressing these issues by going beyond the generic caution to the jury he provided.<\/p>\n The outcome of the Stanley trial shows a concurrence of place-based tensions. Broken treaty promises, the loss of territory, fear of Indigenous youth and assumptions about criminality, and laws protecting private property all influenced the result of the criminal case. The safeguards under trespass laws, to give notice and time to leave, didn\u2019t protect Boushie. Even these safeguards are now potentially being eroded as Saskatchewan considers changes to provincial trespass laws<\/a> to require explicit permission to enter private land. Despite repeated references to property during the trial, the defence of property was not asserted by Stanley, nor did the judge put it before the jury. This left more room for the shooting to be cast as an accident and, therefore, for jurors to avoid the troubling question of whether Stanley was justified in taking Boushie\u2019s life to protect his property.<\/p>\n Judges and jurors must be asked to confront these difficult questions or we risk upholding an implicit shift toward sanctioning the use of lethal force to protect property. Such a shift has the dangerous potential to compound place-based tensions and move us farther from a renewed treaty relationship. To put it simply, property and place matter in criminal law, and we need to start talking about them.<\/p>\n This article is part of\u00a0What can we learn from the Stanley trial?<\/a>\u00a0special feature.<\/strong><\/p>\n Photo:\u00a0Caption: RCMP handout<\/span><\/p>\n Do you have something to say about the article you just read? Be part of the\u00a0<\/em>Policy Options\u00a0discussion, and send in your own submission.\u00a0Here is a\u00a0<\/em>link<\/em><\/a>\u00a0on how to do it. <\/em>|\u00a0Souhaitez-vous r\u00e9agir \u00e0 cet article ? <\/em>Joignez-vous aux d\u00e9bats d\u2019<\/em>Options politiques\u00a0et soumettez-nous votre texte en suivant ces\u00a0<\/em>directives<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On an otherwise unremarkable summer afternoon in 2016, five Indigenous youth drove onto a farm in rural Saskatchewan owned by 56-year-old Gerald Stanley, a White farmer. The youth came from the Red Pheasant First Nation. After a day of drinking and swimming in the South Saskatchewan River, the youth sprang a leak in a tire […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":240286,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"2025-10-08T02:15:07Z","apple_news_api_id":"cfe7efa7-96b4-4970-99b9-7429f840faa3","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2025-10-08T02:15:07Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/Az-fvp5a0SXCZuXQp-ED6ow","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false},"categories":[9380,9359,9372],"tags":[9241],"article-status":[],"irpp-category":[4371,4339],"section":[],"irpp-tag":[],"class_list":["post-266581","issues","type-issues","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-autochtones","category-loi-droits","category-recent-stories-fr","tag-systeme-de-justice","irpp-category-autochtones","irpp-category-loi-et-justice"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GS-canvas-shoes.png\")
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