DAVID STEEVES – BIO

David Steeves is a lawyer and a member of the Bars of Nova Scotia and Alberta. He graduated from Dalhousie Law School this spring with a Master of Laws degree completed under the supervision of Prof. Philip Girard. David also holds a Bachelor of Laws degree from Dalhousie Law School as well as a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature and History from Mount Allison University. Upon receiving his undergraduate law degree, David completed his articles in the Calgary office of Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP. During his graduate studies, David was an invited guest lecturer to both undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Toronto, Osgoode Hall Law School and the University of Western Ontario Law School.

David’s research interests focus on the intersection between narrative and effective written and oral advocacy, Law and Literature, and legal history. Presently residing in Toronto and pursuing a career in litigation, David has one book chapter in press and is developing other articles in the areas of advocacy as well as Law and Literature scholarship for publication.

NSBS RACE & THE LAW ESSAY PRIZE – PAPER ABSTRACT

"Maniacal Murderer or Death Dealing Car: The Case of Daniel Perry Sampson 1933-1935"

On the evening of July 19, 1933, the bodies of young brothers Edward and Bramwell Heffernan were found a short distance from each other along the railway tracks that ran near their home on the outskirts of Halifax, Nova Scotia. With their clothes torn to shreds and their bodies bloodied, many believed that their deaths had been caused by a tragic misadventure with a passing train while others speculated that a deranged killer was in their midst. Following an inconclusive coroner’s inquest and months of fruitless investigation by local police and the RCMP, Daniel Perry Sampson, an African-Nova Scotian veteran of the Great War, was arrested for the brutal murder of both boys. Sampson’s passage through the courts included two sets of trials and appeals before Nova Scotian jurists as well as an appearance before the Supreme Court of Canada. Throughout, graphic details of the boys’ deaths as well as Sampson’s plea of insanity and his counsel’s allegations of bias, procedural unfairness and judicial error were fodder for the front pages of Halifax’s four daily newspapers, making this one of the city’s most notorious cases in the 1930s.

Although there has been some limited attention paid to Sampson since, a closer examination of this case not only illustrates Halifax’s response to crime during a period of social and economic upheaval but also reveals a previously unknown aspect of racial discrimination that impacted most, if not all, jury trials of African-Nova Scotians in Halifax from 1890 until 1943. Employing an interdisciplinary framework that bridges literature, legal history, doctrinal legal scholarship and geography, this paper excavates from case files further examples of discrimination towards the city’s minority communities and exposes a previously unknown piece of Canadian legal history.

This paper will appear in the first collection of African-Canadian legal history forthcoming in 2010 and published by the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History.