Andrea Lynn MacGillivray

The appellant, convicted of sexual assault, appealed his conviction and sought to introduce fresh evidence.

The appeal court dismissed the application for fresh evidence, finding it irrelevant, not credible, or not affecting the outcome.

The court also dismissed the appeal, upholding the trial judge's credibility assessments, finding no palpable and overriding error, and rejecting arguments that the trial judge failed to consider the appellant's racialized background or relied on stereotypes.

A young person was found guilty after trial of three firearm-related offences: possession of a prohibited firearm, occupying a motor vehicle containing a prohibited firearm, and possession of a loaded prohibited firearm.

The offences arose from a single occurrence on September 23, 2016, involving a loaded Mossberg 12-gauge sawed-off shotgun found in a vehicle.

The Crown sought 6 to 9 months in custody followed by probation.

The court found that the Crown failed to establish that the offences met the "exceptional case" threshold under section 39(1)(d) of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, which is required to impose custody on a non-violent offence.

The court imposed a non-custodial sentence consisting of community service and probation, emphasizing the statutory prohibition against general deterrence in youth sentencing and the requirement to impose the least restrictive sentence capable of achieving rehabilitation.

The Crown sought to admit expert testimony on urban street gang slang to interpret intercepted communications in a murder trial.

While the defence conceded the general admissibility criteria, the judge raised concerns about the expert opining on the precise meaning of communications, which could trench on the ultimate issue.

Despite conflicting authorities, the judge permitted the expert to interpret the communications directly, as all counsel uniformly preferred this approach over hypotheticals.

This pre-trial application addressed the admissibility of expert testimony on urban street gangs, evidence of prior violent incidents, and YouTube videos in a murder trial.

The Crown sought to introduce this evidence to establish motive related to inter-gang rivalry.

The court applied the Mohan criteria and a cost/benefit analysis, ruling that expert evidence on general gang phenomena and specific incidents was admissible, but with limitations on ultimate issues and hearsay.

Initially, some videos were admitted, but this ruling was reversed after the accused made admissions regarding gang existence and membership, as the videos' probative value was then outweighed by their prejudice.

A subsequent application by the Crown to re-admit videos during cross-examination of an accused was also refused, upholding the principle against compelling an accused to put character in issue.