An Ontario judge rejects a three-year mandatory minimum for a first-time offender as unconstitutional.

Smickle was alone in his cousin’s apartment at 2 a.m. on March 9, 2009, taking pictures of himself to post on his Facebook page. He was wearing boxer shorts, a white tank top and sunglasses and posing with a loaded handgun to look “cool,” Molloy found.

Unbeknownst to him, members of the Toronto police Emergency Task Force were amassing outside to execute a search warrant in relation to Smickle’s cousin, who they believed had illegal firearms.

The minimum in question was introduced by the Harper government in 2008. The McGuinty government stands by its support for mandatory minimums. Roy McMurtry, Edward Greenspan and Anthony Doob lament the incoherence of Conservative crime policy.