Christian Desrosiers

The appellant sought an extension of time to appeal historical guilty-plea convictions entered between 1996 and 2005, after later being found unfit to stand trial because of intellectual disability.

A majority of the provincial appellate court refused the extension.

The Supreme Court held there was no reversible error in that refusal and dismissed the appeal, adopting the majority appellate reasons.

A dissenting justice would have granted the extension and remitted the matter.

The appellant was convicted of second degree murder following a jury trial.

The issue on appeal was whether the trial judge's charge to the jury was unfair because the judge provided opinions on the evidence while summarizing the theory of the defence.

The Supreme Court of Canada unanimously agreed with the dissenting judge in the Quebec Court of Appeal that the trial judge's charge compromised the fairness of the trial, and ordered a new trial.

The Court dismissed the Crown appeal and upheld the setting aside of convictions for sexual assault and aggravated assault.

It held that on these facts condom use was required to negate a realistic possibility of HIV transmission, but the trial judge committed an error of law by relying on speculative inferences from a doctor's note as confirmatory evidence that no condom was used.

Without reliable confirmatory evidence, guilt was not proven beyond a reasonable doubt.