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Nov 08/10 - Pt 1: Judge John Reilly

In 1997, Judge John Reilly did something no provincial court judge was supposed to do. Frustrated by so many impoverished people from Alberta's Stoney Reserve facing charges, he pointed to the Native leadership and ordered an investigation into corruption on the Reserve. We talk to Judge Reilly about his new book, Bad Medicine.

Listen to Part One: (Pop-up)

PART ONE

It's Monday, November 8th.

George W. Bush has revealed that the worst moment of his presidency came after Hurricane Katrina - when Kanye West accused him of not caring about black people.

Currently, the second-worst moment was on September 11, 2001, when he mispronounced lawnmower TWICE while reading that goat book.

This is The Current.

Bad Medicine - Judge John Reilly

The figures are staggering. According to Stats Can, Aboriginal adults account for twenty-two percent of the prisoners in Canada, while making up only three percent of our population. And those numbers are bound to jump when the federal government's tough on crime legislation starts to be felt across the country.

It's a situation that John Reilly knows well. He is a provincial court judge in Alberta. And for most of his career he had jurisdiction over the Stoney Nakoda First Nation in Morley, Alberta. At first he thought he was doing good from his courtroom but eventually Judge Reilly's views changed. His story is told in a new book, Bad Medicine: A Judge's Struggle for Justice in a First Nations Community. Judge John Reilly joined us from Calgary.

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