Elina Marinosyan

The applicant brought an entrapment application seeking a stay of proceedings under section 24(1) of the Charter, alleging police facilitated criminal acts.

The court summarily dismissed the application, finding it relied on facts not in evidence and mischaracterized the interaction between a confidential source and police.

The court held that the police had reasonable suspicion to investigate and there was no evidence that they induced the applicant, who admitted to already being a drug dealer, to commit the offence.

The applicant, having been convicted of drug trafficking offences, brought an application to re-open his trial prior to sentencing based on fresh evidence.

The applicant discovered that the police source handler involved in the search warrant had received a negative judicial credibility assessment in an unrelated case.

The court applied the Palmer test for fresh evidence and dismissed the application, finding that the evidence did not bear on a decisive issue and would not have affected the result, as cross-examining the source handler on unrelated credibility findings would not have advanced the challenge to the search warrant.

The accused was convicted of eight offences including possession of multiple controlled substances (fentanyl, cocaine, ketamine, methamphetamine, and GHB) for the purpose of trafficking, assault of a peace officer with intent to resist or prevent lawful arrest, attempt to take a weapon from a peace officer, and possession of proceeds of crime.

The court considered the accused's prior criminal record including two previous P4P convictions, his Indigenous background without connection to Indigenous culture (no Gladue report requested), his history of substance addiction, employment, and partial rehabilitation.

The court imposed a global sentence of five years, with four years for the P4P fentanyl index offence and one year consecutive for the assault of a peace officer, reduced by twelve months of combined Summers credit and Downes mitigation, resulting in four years remaining to serve.

The accused was convicted by jury of the attempted murder of her infant daughter and her mother, and of aggravated assault of the daughter, following an incident in which all three were found unconscious after being injected with insulin.

The Court of Appeal ordered a new trial on the attempted murder count relating to the mother on the basis that the jury instructions failed to distinguish between attempted murder and the offence of aiding suicide where the mother may have self-administered the insulin.

The majority of the Supreme Court of Canada allowed the Crown's appeal, restoring the conviction, finding no air of reality to the theory that the mother voluntarily injected herself with suicidal intent.

The majority held that trial judges must only instruct on theories lacking air of reality where there is a sufficient evidentiary foundation, and that the cumulative circumstantial evidence did not support a reasonable inference that the mother intended to end her own life.

The dissent would have dismissed the Crown's appeal, finding an air of reality to the inference of autonomous self-injection and holding that the trial judge was required to instruct the jury on the legal significance of I.F.'s possible voluntary participation to the actus reus of attempted murder.

The appellant, Janice Antonio, Executrix of The Estate of Inez Antonio, appealed a discretionary decision of an Associate Justice to extend the time to set the action down for trial under rule 48.14 of the Rules of Civil Procedure.

The court found that the Associate Justice correctly identified and applied the legal test, considered the relevant evidence, and exercised discretion appropriately.

The appeal was dismissed, and costs were awarded to the respondents.

The court considered whether to convert an application regarding the enforcement of promissory notes and a shareholder loan between family members and a family business into an action.

The applicant, Hossein Jalilnattajamiri, sought payment under two promissory notes from the respondents, Mahmoud Jalilnattajamiri and Fouka Furniture Inc. The respondents alleged misrepresentation and mismanagement by the applicant, raising complex factual and credibility issues.

The court found that the matter required a full trial due to the complexity and conflicting evidence, and ordered the application be converted to an action.

The appellant, a nurse, was convicted by a jury of attempted murder of her 19-month-old daughter (E.) and her mother (I.F.) by administering insulin, and aggravated assault of E. The attempted murder of E. resulted in severe, permanent brain damage.

The appellant appealed both convictions and sentences.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the conviction appeal for the attempted murder of E. and the sentence appeal, finding the life sentence for E.'s attempted murder fit given the severe harm and breach of trust.

However, the Court allowed the appeal for the attempted murder of I.F. and ordered a new trial, finding that the trial judge erred in jury instructions by not sufficiently distinguishing attempted murder from aiding suicide, particularly regarding the mens rea and causal link if I.F. had self-administered the insulin.