Ana Serban

The applicant, Abdirisaq Muse, sought a mistrial after being found guilty by a jury, arguing that the jury was improperly constituted due to the retrospective application of Bill C-75, which abolished peremptory challenges.

This application followed the Ontario Court of Appeal's decision in R. v. Chouhan, which held that the amendments regarding peremptory challenges were to be applied prospectively, contrary to the trial judge's initial ruling.

The Crown argued that the court was functus officio post-verdict and that the narrow exceptions to this rule did not apply.

The court dismissed the application, finding it was functus officio and lacked jurisdiction to declare a mistrial post-verdict, except for specific, inapplicable exceptions.

The accused was charged with dangerous driving, failing to stop for police, and driving while prohibited following a police chase of a silver Dodge Caravan on January 18, 2019.

The Crown's case was entirely circumstantial, relying on the fact that the van was rented by the accused's spouse with whom he resided, that he was working at the building from which the van departed, and eyewitness descriptions from two police officers who had only brief glimpses of the driver during the chase.

The defence conceded that the driver committed the offences but argued the Crown had not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused was the driver.

The court found that while the Crown proved the accused had access to and control over the van, the inconsistent and unreliable eyewitness descriptions, combined with the reasonable possibility that the accused could have given the keys to a co-worker, created a reasonable doubt as to the accused's identity as the driver.

All charges were dismissed.

Sentencing following convictions for two counts of manslaughter and multiple related firearm and bodily harm offences arising from a mass shooting in a crowded downtown food court that killed two men and injured numerous bystanders.

The court treated the offences as highly aggravated public gun violence, emphasizing denunciation, deterrence, and protection of the public, while rejecting self-defence and finding only limited mitigation from the offender's race-and-culture evidence and mental disorder evidence.

The court accepted that prolonged administrative segregation and harsh pre-sentence detention conditions breached ss. 7 and 12 of the Charter and used that finding to decline what would otherwise have been a delayed parole ineligibility order.

Life sentences were imposed on the two manslaughter counts, with concurrent fixed terms on the remaining counts and pre-sentence credit applied to the determinate sentences.