Anna Gilmer

The offenders were sentenced for their roles in the home invasion robbery and murder of the victim.

Wight, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was an active participant in the severe beating, was sentenced to 13 years imprisonment, less pre-sentence custody credit.

Hoo-Hing, who was found guilty of second degree murder as a secondary party for facilitating entry and assisting in the robbery plan, received a mandatory life sentence with a 13-year period of parole ineligibility.

The court also ordered the forfeiture of $18,800 seized from Hoo-Hing as proceeds of crime.

The accused brought an application under s. 11(b) of the Charter seeking a stay of proceedings due to unreasonable delay.

The projected delay from arrest to the end of the trial was 39.5 months, exceeding the 30-month presumptive ceiling established in Jordan.

The court found that the delay was primarily attributable to the exceptional circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic, which caused significant court closures and systemic backlogs.

The application for a stay of proceedings was dismissed.

During deliberations in a lengthy murder trial, the jury sent several notes indicating they had reached unanimous verdicts for two accused and a unanimous verdict on a lesser included offence for the third accused, but were deadlocked on the greater offence for the third accused.

Five majority jurors sent notes attacking the reasoning of the minority jurors, including allegations of racism.

The trial judge declined to conduct an inquiry into the minority jurors' reasoning or declare a mistrial, finding that doing so would violate the common law jury secrecy rule and s. 649 of the Criminal Code.

The court accepted the unanimous verdicts reached by the jury.

In a trial for first-degree murder involving three co-accused, the Crown and one co-accused sought to admit text messages and prior convictions of another co-accused to establish a drug dealer-purchaser relationship and a disposition for violence and firearms.

The court ruled the evidence admissible, finding that its probative value in supporting the co-accused's defence of lack of intent outweighed the prejudicial effect.

The court provided mid-trial and final limiting instructions to the jury regarding the permissible and impermissible uses of the disposition evidence.

The accused, charged with first-degree murder, brought a pre-trial motion alleging his statement to police was obtained in violation of his right to counsel under s. 10(b) of the Charter.

The police delayed his access to counsel for ten hours while securing search warrants.

When finally offered a call at 2:35 a.m., the accused asked to wait until morning when his lawyer would be awake.

The police nevertheless proceeded to interview him at 4:15 a.m.

The court found the accused was reasonably diligent in exercising his rights and did not waive them.

The police violated their duty to hold off eliciting evidence, and the statement was excluded under s. 24(2) of the Charter.

The accused was charged with several offences, including sexual assault and child luring.

During the investigation, police impersonated the 15-year-old complainant using her phone to communicate with the accused and capture his messages without a warrant.

Upon his arrest, police conducted a warrantless search of his cell phone, taking screenshots of all messages across multiple applications.

The court found that the accused had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his messages to the complainant, and that the warrantless undercover operation violated his s. 8 Charter rights.

The court also found the search of his phone incident to arrest was overly broad and violated s. 8.

Applying s. 24(2) of the Charter, the court excluded the evidence obtained from the undercover operation and the search incident to arrest.

The Crown sought to admit the accused's police statement in a trial for sexual offences involving a minor.

The court found that the police breached the accused's rights under ss. 10(a) and 10(b) of the Charter by failing to inform him of the most serious charge (procuring) and by delaying his access to counsel for nearly two hours without justification.

Applying the Grant framework, the court concluded the breaches were serious and significantly impacted the accused's Charter-protected interests.

The statement was excluded under s. 24(2) and found inadmissible under the voluntariness rule.