No Legal Way Out

AUGUST 2021

200 pages, 5.5 x 8.5 in. 978-0-7748-3809-2 PB $30.95 USD / £17.99 GBP 978-0-7748-3808-5 HC $75.00 USD / £49.00 GBP also available as an e-book

LAW / WOMEN’S STUDIES

SERIES: Landmark Cases in Canadian Law

NADIA VERRELLI is an associate professor of political science at Laurentian University. She is the editor of The Democratic Dilemma: Reforming Canada’s Supreme Court, and author of numerous articles and book chapters. LORI CHAMBERS is a professor of gender and women’s studies at Lakehead University. She is the author of Married Women and Property Law in Victorian Ontario and Misconceptions: Unmarried Motherhood and the Ontario Children of Unmarried Parents Act, 1921–1969, both winners of the Alison Prentice Award.

R v Ryan, Domestic Abuse, and the Defence of Duress

Nadia Verrelli and Lori Chambers

“Nadia Verrelli and Lori Chambers provide readers with a marvellously compelling version of a case with great public importance. This is an important and impressive work.”

— CONSTANCE BACKHOUSE, professor of law, University of Ottawa

An RCMP sting caught Nicole Doucet (Ryan) trying to hire a hitman to kill her ex-husband. It was supposed to be an open-and-shut case. It wasn’t. No Legal Way Out details the judicial process, media coverage, and legal implications of R v Ryan. Appealed up to the Supreme Court of Canada, Doucet’s initial acquittal – on the basis of duress in the context of abuse – was overturned, but a stay of proceedings meant that she could not be tried again. The court castigated the RCMP for not protecting her, prompting a one-sided investigation that ultimately exonerated the force and garnered substantial critical media attention for Doucet.

R v Ryan limited the legal options for women seeking to escape abuse and had a profoundly negative impact on public perceptions of domestic violence. This unabashedly feminist analysis explains why the court, the police, and the media let down all women trapped by intimate partner terrorism.

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