Time limits were meant to speed up justice but they also halt hundreds of criminal cases

When police turned up at Melanie Hatton’s home in Kelowna, B.C., in November 2021, she says they found her in the bathroom covered in blood, her then-husband Jeffrey Maclean was standing over her “in an aggressive manner.”She describes a gruesome scene in a court filing, with blood from her head wound allegedly smeared on Maclean’s mouth from his whispering in her ear. The filing in a civil lawsuit against Maclean says he told a 911 operator his wife was “bleeding like a pig.”