3 total
Accused found guilty of home invasion and theft based on the doctrine of recent possession.
The accused was charged with multiple offences, including break and enter, assault, unlawful confinement, and theft, following a home invasion of a 76-year-old woman.
The victim was tied to a chair while her home was ransacked and her vehicle and wallet were stolen.
Although the victim could not identify the intruder, the accused was found in possession of her stolen credit cards within two hours of the offence.
Applying the doctrine of recent possession, the court inferred that the accused was the intruder and found him guilty on all counts.
Charter application to exclude witness testimony for alleged police abuse of process dismissed.
The defendant applied under sections 7 and 24 of the Charter to exclude the testimony of his former girlfriend, arguing that police violated her s. 10(b) right to counsel during an interrogation, which amounted to an abuse of process.
The court found that while the witness's rights may have been breached, the defendant's fair trial rights were not violated.
The court held that the police conduct did not undermine society's expectations of fairness in the administration of justice, and excluding the evidence would be more likely to bring the administration of justice into disrepute.
The application was dismissed.
The court allowed the appeal and ordered a new trial due to the trial judge's misapprehension of evidence and flawed credibility analysis.
Candice McFadden appealed her conviction for assaulting her common law spouse with a weapon.
The Superior Court of Justice found that the trial judge misapprehended evidence regarding the appellant's account of the incident, failed to conduct a full R. v. W.(D.) analysis by focusing too narrowly on the final moments of the confrontation, and applied a different standard of review to the evidence of the victim and the accused.
The appeal was allowed, the conviction set aside, and a new trial ordered.
