Bella Petrouchinova

During a criminal trial, the Crown sought to admit the accused’s police statement and initiated a voir dire to establish voluntariness.

The issue was whether the Crown could meet its burden where it failed to call one of the arresting officers who had contact with the accused prior to the statement.

The court held that the Crown must call all persons in authority who had legally meaningful investigative or custodial contact with the accused or who were in a position to influence the giving of the statement, unless their absence is satisfactorily explained.

Because an officer present during the arrest spoke with the accused’s distraught mother within the accused’s earshot and was not called to testify, a material evidentiary gap existed.

The Crown therefore failed to prove voluntariness beyond a reasonable doubt and the statement was excluded.

The accused pleaded guilty to robbery while armed with a crowbar during a home invasion.

The Crown sought a four-year penitentiary sentence while the defence sought a two-year-less-one-day reformatory sentence plus probation.

The court imposed a reformatory sentence, finding this an exceptional case where restorative justice principles, rehabilitation, and the offender's remarkable post-offence conduct warranted a sentence outside the typical home invasion tariff range, despite the serious nature of the offence and its devastating impact on the victims.

The media applied to unseal search warrant materials related to a murder investigation.

The application judge ordered partial unsealing.

Both an accused (Gardiner) and the media appealed.

The Court of Appeal dismissed Gardiner's appeal, finding no error in the partial release.

The Court also dismissed the media's appeal, noting that while the application judge's reasons were inadequate for appellate review, remitting the matter would interfere with a publication ban already imposed by the trial judge.