“R. v. Parks” on Automatism-Sleep Walking

Excerpts from the Paper

"R. v. Parks" on Automatism-Sleep Walking
The Canadian legal system is still evolving, just as the rest of our society is still evolving. Not surprisingly, there occasionally arise instances where the law is confronted with a case so bizarre that no easy answer manifests itself. One of the best examples of this in recent years is the R. v. Park case from 1992 where a young man apparently drove 23 kilometres to the home of his parents in law, killed one of them and injured the other party – and did all of this while asleep. The question thus becomes a very difficult one: is someone who is “asleep” when they commit a terrible act really guilty of mens rea? Additionally, is someone who can drive 23 kilometres and nearly kill two people in a...

.....night; and he needs to subject himself to a motion detector. As well, it is probably not a bad idea for Mr. Parks to place himself in a situation wherein he avoids stress and avoids the enticement to steal or to do things that might complicate his life; the tensions that his previous thievery caused his life cannot be lightly dismissed because people do take their stresses to bed with them when they retire for the evening. Mr. Parks is a gentleman who does have a history of family problems when it comes to sleep disorders, so he will have to address this by following a very rigorous routine for the rest of his life.
Works Cited
R. v. Parks, (1992) 2 S.C.R. 871; 12 Apr. 2010 http://csc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/1992/1992scr2-871/1992scr2-871.pdf