Aliki Yorgiadis

The accused, charged with murder, brought an application to adduce evidence of a third-party suspect defence, pointing to his co-accused who had previously pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact.

The court assessed whether there was a sufficient nexus between the third party and the offence, focusing on motive and opportunity.

Finding that the third party had a severe drug addiction requiring money and was present at the crime scene and with the accused during the relevant times, the court concluded there was some evidence to support the defence.

The application was granted, and the third-party suspect defence was permitted to be put to the jury.

The Crown applied during a voir dire to admit crime scene and autopsy photographs of the deceased in a first-degree murder trial.

The accused argued the photographs were gratuitous, inflammatory, and highly prejudicial.

The court found the photographs were highly probative to illustrate the forensic pathologist's opinions, corroborate testimony, and rebut potential defences such as self-defence or a third-party suspect.

The court concluded the probative value outweighed any prejudicial effect and granted the application to admit the photographs.

The Crown applied to admit utterances of the accused made to two civilian witnesses as prior discreditable conduct, and two ante-mortem statements made by the victim to the same witnesses.

The accused is charged with first degree murder.

The court found that the accused's prior threats to kill the victim were relevant to animus, motive, and intent, and their probative value outweighed their prejudicial effect.

The court also ruled that the victim's ante-mortem statements were admissible under the state of mind exception to the hearsay rule and the principled approach, as they were reliable, necessary, and highly probative of the victim's state of mind and the relationship between the parties.

The Crown applied to edit letters written by the accused while in custody awaiting trial for second-degree murder.

The defence argued that without significant editing, the letters would invite prohibited propensity reasoning, while the Crown argued they contained highly probative confessions relevant to identity, motive, and the third-party suspect defence.

The court balanced the probative value against the prejudicial effect, ordering the removal of references to the accused's knowledge of the legal system and inflammatory language, but retaining passages that amounted to confessions or related to the third-party suspect defence.

The accused, charged with first-degree murder, sought to exclude audio and videotaped statements made to police following his arrest.

The court found that a specific utterance made during transport to the police station was obtained in violation of the accused's rights under ss. 10(a) and 10(b) of the Charter, as he had not been given a reasonable opportunity to speak to counsel and was seeking clarity on his charges.

This utterance was excluded under s. 24(2).

However, the court found the subsequent 3.5-hour videotaped statement was voluntary under the Oickle rule and did not violate the accused's s. 7 right to silence, despite his numerous assertions of the right, as police conduct was not oppressive and the accused maintained an operating mind.