Amanda Maria Heydon

This decision concerns an application for a stay of proceedings under section 11(b) of the Charter due to unreasonable delay.

The court applied the Jordan framework, calculating a total delay of 569 days, exceeding the 18-month presumptive ceiling for the Ontario Court of Justice.

The court attributed 16.5 days of delay to the defence due to unavailability for a continuation date, resulting in a net delay of 552.5 days, still above the ceiling.

The Crown failed to establish exceptional circumstances.

Even if the net delay fell below the ceiling, the court found the delay of 536 days (if all 33 days were attributed to defence) was "markedly longer than it should have" for a simple one-day domestic trial, given the Crown's failure to expedite disclosure and issues with court resources.

Consequently, the application for a stay of proceedings was granted.

The appellant was convicted of firearm charges and appealed, arguing that his initial arrest for breach of an undertaking was unlawful, leading to an illegal search and discovery of the firearm, thus violating his Charter rights.

The Court of Appeal found that the police lacked reasonable and probable grounds for the initial arrest due to their failure to check an available database (Versadex) for consent to communicate, constituting a s. 9 Charter breach.

However, the Court also determined that the police had independent lawful grounds to search the vehicle under the Cannabis Control Act, 2017, based on observations of marijuana possession.

Applying a fresh s. 24(2) Charter analysis, the Court concluded that despite the s. 9 breach, the firearm evidence should not be excluded, as the impact on the appellant's Charter rights was minimal (due to the lawful CCA search) and society's interest in adjudicating serious charges on their merits strongly favored admission.

The appeal was dismissed.

The appellant was convicted of sexual exploitation and uttering death threats following a judge-alone trial.

He appealed, arguing that the trial judge erred by relying on an ungrounded "common-sense" assumption to reject his evidence and by reversing the burden of proof.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding that the trial judge's credibility assessments were plausible and grounded in the evidence, and that the burden of proof was not reversed.

The court emphasized the high deference given to trial judges' credibility findings and clarified the application of the rule against ungrounded common-sense assumptions.

Following a trial, the defendant was found guilty of assault causing bodily harm and breaching a release order by having contact with his former girlfriend.

The assault involved two punches to the face, resulting in a fractured jaw and broken tooth, and caused significant physical, emotional, and financial harm to the complainant.

The court considered sentencing principles including denunciation, deterrence, rehabilitation, and proportionality, as well as aggravating factors (severity of injuries, intimate partner violence, children present) and mitigating factors (first offender, refugee claimant status, employment, community support, qualified remorse).

The Crown sought 18 months imprisonment, while the defence sought a conditional or intermittent sentence.

The court rejected a conditional sentence due to the extreme nature of the assault and the defendant's qualified remorse, imposing a 12-month custodial sentence for the assault and a concurrent 30-day sentence for the breach, followed by two years of probation.