David S. McFadden

The accused, Nathan Johnson, faced charges including child luring, communicating for sexual services, and distributing sexually explicit material.

The court heard a Charter application for a stay of proceedings due to lost evidence (chatlogs from a dating site).

The chatlogs, crucial for establishing the alleged victim's age as under 18, were deleted from the officer's device and the platform due to police inaction and delay in preservation efforts.

The court found the police officer's failure to preserve the evidence constituted unacceptable negligence, breaching the accused's Section 7 and 11(d) Charter rights to disclosure and a fair trial.

Consequently, the proceedings were stayed.

Thomas Chan was convicted of manslaughter and aggravated assault after fatally stabbing his father and gravely injuring his father's partner during a drug-induced psychotic episode from magic mushrooms.

The court considered the principles of sentencing, including proportionality, denunciation, and deterrence, balancing the high gravity of the offences with the offender's diminished moral blameworthiness due to unforeseeable psychosis and his exemplary character.

The judge imposed a global sentence of five years imprisonment, reduced by 1.5 years for pre-trial custody (including enhanced credit for solitary confinement and restrictive bail conditions), resulting in a net sentence of 3.5 years.

The defendant, convicted of manslaughter and aggravated assault after a drug-induced psychotic episode, applied post-conviction but pre-sentencing to re-open his constitutional challenge to s. 33.1 of the Criminal Code.

He argued that a recent decision by a coordinate judge (R. v. McCaw), which held that a prior declaration of unconstitutionality was binding, constituted exceptional circumstances.

The court dismissed the application, holding that the Lessard test requires exceptional circumstances to re-open a case.

The court disagreed with the reasoning in McCaw, affirming that the horizontal convention of precedent applies to constitutional declarations and that the court was not bound by the prior decision striking down s. 33.1.

Thomas Chan, while in a drug-induced psychotic state after consuming magic mushrooms, fatally stabbed his father and gravely wounded his father's partner.

He was charged with murder, attempted murder, and aggravated assault, with the Crown seeking convictions for manslaughter and aggravated assault.

The defence argued for a verdict of not criminally responsible (NCR) under s. 16 of the Criminal Code, asserting that a pre-existing mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) contributed to the psychosis, making him incapable of knowing his actions were wrong.

The court applied a holistic approach, considering internal cause, continuing danger, and policy factors, and concluded that the psychosis was primarily caused by self-induced intoxication, not the MTBI as a "disease of the mind" for the purposes of s. 16.

Consequently, Chan was found guilty of manslaughter and aggravated assault.

The accused, charged with murder, attempted murder, and aggravated assault after stabbing his father and his father's partner while hallucinating on magic mushrooms, brought an application challenging the constitutionality of s. 33.1 of the Criminal Code.

Section 33.1 precludes the defence of self-induced intoxication for general intent offences involving violence.

The court found that while s. 33.1 violates the accused's rights under ss. 7 and 11(d) of the Charter by substituting the intent to become intoxicated for the fault and voluntariness elements of the offences, the provision is saved under s. 1 of the Charter.

The court held that protecting victims, particularly women and children, from intoxicated violence and ensuring offender accountability are pressing and substantial objectives that justify the Charter infringements.