A Guide to Mental Disorder Law in Canadian Criminal Justice

Anita Szigeti, LL.B., is the founding lawyer of Anita Szigeti Advocates, a Toronto firm focusing on mental health and the law. Ms. Szigeti graduated from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law in 1990. She was called to the bar in Ontario in 1992 and in Nunavut in 2014. She is currently co-director (with Dr. Ruby Dhand) of the Mental Health Law course within the Health Law LLM at Osgoode Professional Development, where she obtained a Certificate in Tribunal Adjudication in 2018. Ms. Szigeti has published widely in this area, including as co-author of five textbooks on mental health law across Canada. These include the LexisNexis publications: Canadian Anthology on Mental Health and the Law (2024), Law and Mental Health in Canada: Cases and Materials (2023), Halsbury’s on Mental Health Law (2023), A Guide to Consent and Capacity Law in Ontario (2024), and A Guide to Mental Disorder Law in Canadian Criminal Justice (2020). She is a recognized expert in the area of mental disorder in both civil and criminal law contexts. She has been retained as an expert witness in mental health justice matters.

Ms. Szigeti has been a leader in the field for 30 years at the Ontario bar. She has been representing clients in Nunavut since 2014 as a member of the Nunavut Law Society. Ms. Szigeti was the Chair of the Mental Health Legal Committee (MHLC) for a decade and the founding first Chair of Legal Aid Ontario's Mental Health Law & Policy Advisory Group. For six years, she served as an elected Toronto Director of the Criminal Lawyers' Association (CLA) and the Association's Chair of its Mental Disorder Portfolio. She also served as the CLA’s Women’s Director through COVID in 2020-2021. Ms. Szigeti is the founder and President of the Law And Mental Disorder Association (LAMDA), a national umbrella advocacy organization of 200 lawyers practising mental health law. She is the founder and Secretary of Women in Canadian Criminal Defence (WiCCD), a national advocacy organization for women and gender non-conforming criminal defence lawyers in Canada. Ms. Szigeti’s community involvement extends to membership on the governing body of several other organizations, including as the sole Canadian (now Emeritus) representative on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Rights Protection and Advocacy (NARPA), an American advocacy organization based in Colorado, and Pilot Place Society, a not for profit 24/7 supervised housing service provider in Toronto.

Ms. Szigeti’s litigation career spans thousands of tribunal level cases, hundreds of cases argued in appellate Courts including fifteen in the Supreme Court of Canada. Ms. Szigeti has also been involved in more than a dozen death inquiries focusing on police use of force in interactions with persons in crisis and just as many high profile Inquests concerning other mental health related and institutional deaths. In 2016, she joined the prestigious Trial Advocacy faculty at the University of Toronto law school. She is a frequent guest lecturer in many mental health law courses at law schools across the country, including at the University of Toronto, Lincoln Alexander School of Law, Western Faculty of Law and Osgoode Hall Law School. Ms. Szigeti is passionate about teaching advocacy as well as the substantive law of mental disorder. She has provided education and training throughout her career to Crowns, Coroners, adjudicators, psychiatrists, defence lawyers, clients, their families and anyone else who asked. She has particular expertise in training tribunal, board and agency adjudicators on how to address mental health matters culturally competently. Ms. Szigeti has mentored hundreds of new lawyers and law students and loves coaching advocacy at trial and appellate levels, including coaching mooting teams at law schools. When she's not mentoring new generations of lawyers and law students, she is in a courtroom litigating, nearly every day. She is grateful for three decades of opportunities to advocate on behalf of vulnerable people, giving a voice to those who otherwise may not be heard at all.

Michael Davies practises law with Davies Barristers in Ottawa. Prior to entering law school, he earned a PhD in neurophysiology from the University of Wales. He is a graduate of Western Law (1993). In 2000 he completed an LLM under the supervision of Professor Don Stuart at Queen’s University. Since his call to the bar in 1995, he has been practising criminal law, at both trial and appellate levels. Michael’s practice has always included a special focus on representing individuals with serious mental health issues.

In the Supreme Court of Canada, Michael participated in many of the leading cases in this area of law including Tulikorpi, Pinet, Mazzei and Conway. On Conway he was amicus curiae at the Court of Appeal, the case that ultimately led to Charter jurisdiction for Review Boards in Canada. Michael has frequently been appointed as amicus curiae by the Court of Appeal for Ontario, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice and the Ontario Court of Justice in cases involving individuals with mental disorders. He has served as counsel or amicus on many of the leading appeals from Review Board matters in the Ontario Court of Appeal, including: LePage, Taylor and Chaudry. Michael has been counsel on several dangerous offender matters involving extensive psychiatric evidence. He has also participated in long and complex Coroner's Inquests in relation to NCR accused and other individuals with mental health issues.

Michael is a sought-after speaker who is routinely involved in the education of all justice system participants. He has been part of the National Criminal Law Program Faculty since 2013. He also teaches Advanced Criminal Procedure and Appellate Advocacy at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law. Mostly, he likes spending time with his border collie.

Meaghan McMahon was called to the Ontario Bar in 2015. She practises criminal and mental disorder law at Davies Barristers, in Ottawa. She represents individual clients in criminal trials and on appeals. Ms. McMahon has been counsel to intervener organizations at all levels of court, including the Supreme Court of Canada. She appears regularly in Ottawa’s Mental Health Court. She facilitates diversion of her clients out of criminal justice wherever possible. Ms. McMahon also represents clients before the Ontario Review Board and the Consent and Capacity Board, and on appeals of these matters. Ms. McMahon has acted as co-counsel for the appellant or an intervener on a number of cases dealing with important mental health issues, including Campbell (Re), 2018 ONCA 140, Attorney General of Ontario v. G (Ontario) (on reserve at the Supreme Court of Canada – case 38585), and Barker v. Patel, 2018 ONCA 926. She has also been involved in Coroner’s inquests examining lethal interactions between police and persons in crisis. Ms. McMahon has served on the executive of the Defence Counsel Association of Ottawa (DCAO) since 2018. She is the Recent Call Regional Director for the Criminal Lawyers’ Association (CLA), and is a member of the CLA’s Mental Health Committee. Ms. McMahon is also a member of the Law and Mental Disorder Association (LAMDA). She has co-chaired several conferences on Mental Disorder Law in Criminal Justice co-hosted by CLA and LAMDA. She has written and published academic articles on mental disorder law, and has presented on evolving jurisprudence in the area to educate defence counsel and others. She has co-taught and guest lectured at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law, since 2017.

Jill R. Presser is a judge of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Toronto. Before her appointment in July 2021, her law practice focused on appellate criminal defence and mental health for almost 25 years. She appeared as co-counsel on a number of interventions in the Supreme Court of Canada in cases dealing with important mental health issues. Justice Presser was an adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law from 2011 to 2016. She was a senior lawyer member of the Consent and Capacity Board of Ontario from 2006 to 2014, adjudicating civil mental health issues. Justice Presser has published and spoken extensively at legal and judicial education programs on criminal law, evidence, mental health law, artificial intelligence and the law, privacy and surveillance, and women in the law. She is co-author of A Guide to Mental Disorder Law in Canadian Criminal Justice (LexisNexis, 2020); as well as co-editor and contributing author to Litigating Artificial Intelligence (Emond, 2021). She co-authored a law reform report, AI Case Study: Probabilistic Genotyping DNA Tools in Canadian Criminal Courts (Law Commission of Ontario, 2021). Justice Presser has also written numerous articles and book chapters, including “Mom’s Rea: Motherhood, Criminal Defence, and Guilt” in Women in Criminal Justice (Durville Publications, 2018), and co-authored with Anita Szigeti, ““…Even and Especially the Most Reviled and Despised”: Justice Marc Rosenberg’s Commitment to Access to Justice and Procedural Fairness for the Mentally Disordered” in To Ensure that Justice is Done (Thomson Reuters, 2017).