Bradley Reitz

The appellant appealed his convictions for drug and firearms offences, which were based on constructive possession of items found in a locked closet at a stash house.

The Crown's case was entirely circumstantial.

The trial judge convicted the appellant, rejecting the defence argument that it was reasonable to infer the appellant lacked knowledge or control of the closet's contents.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal and directed an acquittal.

The Court found, with the Crown's concession, that it was reasonably inferable the appellant went to the house to clear it after his associates' arrests but left the closet because he lacked access or knowledge of its contents, meaning constructive possession was not the only reasonable inference.

The appellant appealed his conviction and sentence for possession of 26 pounds of raw marijuana found in the trunk of his car.

He argued the trial judge erred in finding reasonable and probable grounds for the arrest and search based on an officer smelling raw marijuana, and that the trial judge failed to reconcile conflicting officer testimony.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the conviction appeal, finding no error in relying on the smell evidence to establish grounds for arrest.

The sentence appeal was also dismissed, as the trial judge did not err in rejecting a conditional sentence given the appellant's antecedents and the quantity of marijuana.

The appellant was acquitted at trial of diamond smuggling charges after the trial judge found that a 'hard entry' by an Emergency Response Team violated his s. 8 Charter rights and excluded the evidence.

The summary conviction appeal court allowed the Crown's appeal and ordered a new trial, relying on the Supreme Court's intervening decision in Cornell.

The Court of Appeal granted the appellant leave to appeal but dismissed the appeal, holding that the police must be allowed latitude in tactical entry decisions and that the hard entry was reasonable given the unknown risks, including the potential presence of weapons.

The appellant appealed the dismissal of her application from a forfeiture order.

The Crown conceded that the application judge erred in failing to address the matter on the merits and agreed not to argue estoppel.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, set aside the order, and remitted the matter back to the Superior Court of Justice to be dealt with on the merits.

The appellant appealed his conviction, arguing he was deprived of the opportunity to effectively challenge the police conduct in obtaining a search warrant because the trial judge did not give the Crown an opportunity to show the warrant was properly granted on the unredacted information.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding the case was controlled by R. v. Blake.

The defence had not requested a review of the unredacted information or judicial summaries, nor challenged the confidential informant claim at trial.

The respondent was charged with trafficking cocaine.

On the trial date, the assigned Crown counsel realized she had previously represented the respondent and eventually disclosed a potential conflict of interest.

The trial judge stayed the proceedings as an abuse of process and awarded costs against the Crown, finding the Crown's conduct placed the respondent in an untenable position.

The Court of Appeal allowed the Crown's appeal, holding that the trial judge made a palpable and overriding error in concluding the Crown could not prove its case and failed to apply the proper legal principles for a stay of proceedings.

The stay and costs orders were set aside.

The appellant appealed his convictions for possessing a loaded restricted firearm and being present in a motor vehicle with a firearm.

He was arrested during a fake drug deal where he and two others intended to rob an undercover officer.

The trial judge found him guilty as a party under s. 21(2) of the Criminal Code.

The Court of Appeal upheld the finding of common intention to rob but applied the Kienapple principle to stay the less serious firearms charge.

The appellant appealed his conviction for offences related to a marijuana grow operation.

The trial judge found that the house was used solely for cultivating marijuana, the appellant was inside for at least thirteen minutes, and he had a key to the front door.

The Court of Appeal held that the trial judge was entitled to infer possession (knowledge and control) from these facts, especially absent any evidence from the appellant.

The appeal was dismissed.

The Crown appealed the respondent's acquittal for possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking.

The trial judge had excluded the cocaine evidence, finding the arresting officer lacked objectively reasonable grounds to arrest the respondent, who was fleeing the scene of a reported robbery, due to a discrepancy in the suspect's weight description.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, holding that in the totality of the circumstances, including the timing and the respondent fleeing the scene, the single discrepancy was not enough to render the arrest objectively unreasonable.

A new trial was ordered.

The appellant appealed his sentence of 8 years (effective 6 years and 4 months) for trafficking 3 kilograms of cocaine.

He argued the sentencing judge erred in applying the parity principle by giving him a longer sentence than his co-accused, and by treating money forfeited by the co-accused as equivalent to jail time.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding the appellant's greater culpability justified the longer sentence and that any error regarding the co-accused's forfeiture did not render the appellant's sentence unfit.

The appellant appealed his conviction on the basis of undisclosed evidence.

At trial, evidence suggested a witness had been charged but the charges were dropped due to a 'glitch', when in fact the witness was never charged.

The Court of Appeal applied the principles from R. v. Dixon and found that the failure to disclose this information impaired the appellant's right to make full answer and defence, as counsel could not adequately explore whether the witness's testimony was a quid pro quo for not being charged.

The conviction was quashed and a new trial ordered.

The appellant appealed his committal for extradition to the United States on drug trafficking charges and sought judicial review of the Minister's surrender order.

He argued that the Canadian authorities' withdrawal of domestic charges without notice constituted an abuse of process, depriving him of the opportunity to build a record to argue against extradition.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding no error in the extradition judge's refusal to grant a stay, as the domestic charges were not a ruse and the appellant had other avenues to raise his arguments.

The Court also upheld the Minister's surrender order, finding it was not unjust or oppressive despite the potentially severe penalty in the United States.

The appellant was sought for extradition by the United States to face charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, and securities fraud.

He appealed his committal order and sought judicial review of the Minister's surrender order.

On the committal appeal, the appellant argued the extradition judge failed to weigh the evidence as required by recent Supreme Court jurisprudence; the Court of Appeal held that a limited weighing of the evidence would not have changed the result.

On the judicial review, the appellant argued the Minister lacked jurisdiction to order surrender due to a 'misalignment' between the foreign charges, the committal order, and the alleged conduct.

The Court of Appeal dismissed this argument, finding that the Extradition Act, the applicable treaty, and the principle of double criminality require only that the alleged conduct constitute an offence in Canada, not that it precisely mirror the foreign charges.

Both the appeal and the application for judicial review were dismissed.

The appellants appealed their convictions and sentences for production and possession of marijuana for the purpose of trafficking.

They argued that the search warrant was invalid and that the use of the terms 'Asian' and 'Vietnamese' in the information to obtain constituted racial profiling.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the conviction appeal, finding that the search warrant was supported by reasonable and probable grounds based on police investigation, and that the racial descriptors were used for identification rather than profiling.

However, the sentence appeal was allowed, and the thirteen-month sentence was reduced to time served (five and a half months).

The appellant appealed her five-year sentence, arguing that the sentencing judge failed to apply the principle of parity with her co-accused.

The Court of Appeal denied the Crown's adjournment request, noting the appeal would become moot if delayed.

The Court dismissed the appeal, finding the sentencing judge struck an appropriate balance and correctly concluded that the appellant's late willingness to cooperate put her in a different position from her co-accused.

The appellant appealed the sentence imposed by the Superior Court of Justice.

The sentencing judge had departed from the norm of 2 for 1 credit for pre-sentence custody, granting only 1 for 1 credit based on remission and education points.

The Court of Appeal found the sentencing judge's reasons unpersuasive, particularly because the sentence imposed was at the top end of the Crown's proposed range.

The appeal was allowed, and the sentence was varied to include 2 for 1 credit for pre-sentence custody, resulting in a sentence of time served.

The appellant appealed his conviction, arguing that the trial judge erred in failing to find that the initial police stop was arbitrary.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, holding that the trial judge's findings of fact supported the conclusion that the initial detention was not arbitrary, and there was no basis to interfere with those findings.

The appellants operated a mail fraud scheme involving fake invoices for an Internet business directory, generating over $1.1 million in revenue.

They were convicted of misleading advertising under the Competition Act.

The trial judge sentenced two appellants to 34 months' imprisonment and a $400,000 fine each, and the third to a nine-month conditional sentence and a $100,000 fine.

On appeal, the Court of Appeal upheld the custodial sentences and the fines for the two main perpetrators, finding that the 1999 amendments to the Competition Act signaled Parliament's intent to treat serious misleading advertising as criminal fraud.

However, the court reduced the third appellant's fine to $35,000 due to his lesser involvement.

The appellant appealed his convictions for possession of a controlled substance for the purpose of trafficking and the related forfeiture order.

He argued that the police violated his rights under ss. 8 and 9 of the Charter during a traffic stop and subsequent vehicle search.

The Court of Appeal found no error in the s. 9 analysis and, although correcting the trial judge's reasoning on s. 8, upheld the search as a valid search for identification evidence incident to arrest.

The court also found the circumstantial evidence sufficient to prove knowledge of the drugs and upheld the forfeiture order.

The applicant, a Canadian citizen, sought judicial review of the Minister of Justice's order surrendering him to the United States to face charges of conspiracy to distribute cocaine.

The applicant argued that the American jurisdictional claim was unfounded, that his surrender violated his section 6(1) Charter right to remain in Canada, and that he was denied procedural fairness.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the application, finding that the Minister correctly applied the substantial connection test to determine that Canada would have jurisdiction in similar circumstances, reasonably weighed the factors favouring prosecution in the United States, and afforded the applicant adequate procedural fairness.