Justice Maria Carroccia delivered her verdict in the Hockey Canada trial last Thursday.Alexandra Newbould/The Canadian Press

The courtroom was packed when Ontario Superior Court judge Maria Carroccia walked in to deliver her verdict in the Hockey Canada trial last Thursday. In her hands was the fate of five former members of Canada’s national junior hockey team accused of sexually assaulting a young woman in a London, Ont., hotel room in 2018. The case made news across the country, raising questions about hockey culture, power dynamics and how to define sexual consent.

Justice Carroccia wisely tuned all that out. It was not up to her to pass moral judgment on the behaviour of the players (which was reprehensible) or to send a message in the wake of the #MeToo movement. The slogan “believe the victim,” she said, had no place in a criminal trial.

The way she saw it, she had one job and one job only: to look at the evidence before her and decide whether the Crown had made its case against the five defendants.

Her conclusion was definitive. It had not. One by........

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