Eric H. Siebenmorgen

The respondent was found not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder for first degree murder.

At his first Ontario Review Board hearing, the board accepted a joint submission for detention in a medium security unit with escorted hospital grounds privileges, but added a condition permitting escorted or accompanied access to the community at the hospital's discretion.

The Crown appealed, arguing the community access condition was unreasonable and that the board breached procedural fairness by adding it without allowing prior submissions.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding the condition was supported by expert psychiatric evidence and that the board did not owe the Crown a common law duty of procedural fairness in these circumstances.

The Attorney General of Canada brought a motion to extend the suspension of a declaration of invalidity to September 30, 2014.

The extension was requested because legislation responding to the court's previous decision was still proceeding through parliament.

As the request was reasonable and consented to by all parties and the amicus curiae, the Court of Appeal granted the motion.

The appellants pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and forcible confinement after subjecting a vulnerable victim to 17 days of torture.

The sentencing judge rejected a joint submission for one appellant and the Crown's proposal for the other, imposing significantly higher sentences without providing reasons or allowing counsel to make submissions.

The Court of Appeal found this was an error in principle, as a joint submission should not be rejected unless it is contrary to the public interest and brings the administration of justice into disrepute.

The appeals were allowed and the sentences were reduced to align with the original submissions.

The appellant appealed his convictions for two counts of robbery, arguing the trial judge failed to properly instruct the jury on the frailties of eyewitness identification evidence and the alibi defence.

The Crown's case rested entirely on the eyewitness identification of two victims who had a brief, stressful encounter with the assailant and provided generic descriptions lacking distinctive features.

The Court of Appeal found the jury instructions deficient, particularly regarding the failure to connect the standard instruction on eyewitness frailties to the specific concerns of the case and the lack of a Hibbert caution regarding in-dock identification.

The convictions were quashed and acquittals entered.

The appellant was convicted by a jury of two counts relating to assaults committed on her child.

On appeal, the appellant argued that the trial judge made fatal errors during the jury selection process.

The Crown conceded that the trial judge erred by deciding to select alternate jurors after a jury of 12 had already been selected, and by erroneously concluding the appellant had exhausted her peremptory challenges, thereby denying her a challenge to which she was entitled.

The Court of Appeal agreed that the second error was fatal and could not be saved by the curative provisions of the Criminal Code.

The appeal was allowed, convictions set aside, and a new trial ordered.

The appellant appealed a disposition of the Ontario Review Board, arguing he should have been granted an absolute discharge.

Amicus curiae raised additional issues regarding the fairness of the hearing, the Board's failure to resolve a treatment impasse with the Waypoint Centre, and the adequacy of the Board's reasons for dismissing the appellant's Charter arguments.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding ample evidence that the appellant remained a significant threat to public safety.

The Court also held that the hearing was fair, the Board reasonably declined to order further treatment options given the appellant's refusal to participate, and the Board lacked jurisdiction to grant the requested Charter remedies or order a transfer to a lesser security hospital.

The appellant appealed his convictions for aggravated assault, assault, and breach of recognizance arising from a stabbing outside a bar.

The trial judge relied on the testimony of a taxi driver who heard the appellant admit to stabbing someone.

The appellant argued that his trial counsel's failure to cross-examine the taxi driver on his preliminary inquiry testimony resulted in a miscarriage of justice.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding that the trial judge was aware of the discrepancies in the evidence and made reasonable credibility findings.

The young person appealed a finding of guilt, arguing the trial judge erred in inferring he knew his brother possessed a knife prior to a fight.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding the inference was reasonably available based on the prior conflict between the parties, their late-night visit to the victims' home, and video evidence showing the appellant and his brother in close contact while the brother clutched an object under his clothing.

The appellant appealed his robbery conviction, arguing the trial judge misapprehended evidence regarding his presence in the group surrounding the victims, disregarded evidence that he was separate from the robbers, and misapprehended evidence about his hat.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding ample evidence, including the appellant's own admissions, to support the conclusion that he was part of the circle of intimidation and that the conviction was safe.

The appellant appealed his convictions for sexual interference, invitation to sexual touching, and corrupting morals, arguing that the trial judge gave inadequate reasons for treating the complainant's testimony differently across the charges and that the verdicts were unreasonable.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding that the trial judge clearly explained his reasoning for acquitting on the sexual assault count while convicting on the others, and that there was ample evidence to support the convictions.

The appellant appealed his conviction for sexual assault, arguing the trial judge erred in her jury instructions regarding frailties in the complainant's eyewitness identification evidence and in permitting the Crown to cross-examine him on his prior criminal record if he testified.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding the jury instructions, read as a whole, adequately addressed the frailties of the identification evidence.

The Court also upheld the trial judge's Corbett ruling, noting she properly balanced probative value against prejudicial effect and appropriately sanitized the prior convictions.

The appellant appealed his dangerous offender designation and indeterminate sentence, arguing for a long-term offender designation and a determinate sentence.

The Court of Appeal upheld the sentencing judge's finding that the appellant's risk of sexually re-offending and committing domestic assaults could not be managed in the community, even as he aged.

The appeal was dismissed.

The appellant was convicted of first degree murder, attempted murder, and arson after driving to the home of his estranged wife's lover, shooting the lover, assaulting his wife, and setting the house on fire.

On appeal, the appellant argued the trial judge erred in instructing the jury on causation under s. 231(5) of the Criminal Code by suggesting he could be liable if he actively participated in a struggle that accidentally caused the gun to discharge.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding that while the causation instruction was potentially confusing, it caused no prejudice because the jury's verdict demonstrated they were satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the appellant intentionally shot the deceased.

The Crown applied to review an order granting the respondent judicial interim release pending his retrial on two counts of first-degree murder.

The Crown argued the application judge erred by failing to appreciate the legal significance of the respondent's failure to provide a supporting affidavit as required by the rules.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the application, finding the affidavit requirement to be purely procedural.

The Crown could have insisted on the affidavit prior to the hearing but did not, and the record contained sufficient information to satisfy the onus for release under s. 515(10) of the Criminal Code.

The appellant appealed convictions arising from a jury trial involving allegations of sexual assault, threatening, assault, attempting to obstruct justice, and breach of bail.

The court held that the trial judge's charge on sexual assault was inaccurate and confusing because it failed to confine the jury's analysis to the first sexual encounter, misapprehended the timing of an alleged threat, and wrongly instructed that the threat could vitiate consent under the Criminal Code.

The court also found reversible error in the failure to instruct on the mens rea for threatening and in the inadequate charge on attempting to obstruct justice.

Because the evidence on the remaining counts was intertwined with the tainted counts, all convictions were quashed and a new trial was ordered.

The appellant appealed his conviction for first degree murder, raising four principal grounds: unreasonableness of the verdict and inadequate jury instructions on circumstantial evidence, improper admission of his statements, inadmissibility of a jailhouse informant's testimony and inadequate Vetrovec warning, and inadequate instructions on the planning and deliberation element.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding that the trial judge properly instructed the jury, correctly admitted the statements, appropriately handled the informant's testimony with a sufficient Vetrovec warning, and fairly charged the jury on planning and deliberation.

The appellants, retail employees and corporate retailers, were charged with working in or carrying on a retail business on a holiday contrary to the Retail Business Holidays Act.

They challenged the constitutionality of the 1993 amendments to the Act, arguing it infringed their freedom of religion under s. 2(a) and equality rights under s. 15 of the Charter.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding that the Act's purpose remains the secular one of providing common pause days for retail employees, and that it does not significantly burden religious freedom.

The court also held that any differential treatment was based on occupational status, not an enumerated or analogous ground under s. 15, and therefore did not constitute discrimination.

The appellant was convicted of first degree murder of a former drug associate.

On appeal, he raised nine grounds of error, including the trial judge's instructions on the failure to call witnesses, the Crown's cross-examination on the failure to cross-examine Crown witnesses, the use of disclosure to tailor evidence, the right to silence, the admission of his criminal record, the voluntariness of statements, informer privilege, the trial judge's interventions, and the jury charge on alternative verdicts.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal.

While the trial judge erred in attributing an alternative defence of manslaughter to the appellant, the Court applied the curative proviso under s. 686(1)(b)(iii) of the Criminal Code, finding that the circumstantial evidence of guilt was overwhelming and the error occasioned no substantial wrong or miscarriage of justice.

The appellant was convicted of second-degree murder based on circumstantial evidence, including traces of his blood and a footwear impression found at the scene.

He appealed the conviction, arguing that his statement to police and running shoes should have been excluded under the Charter, that expert footwear evidence was inadmissible, that the jury instructions were flawed, and that the verdict was unreasonable.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding that the appellant was not detained when he gave his statement, the expert evidence was properly admitted, the jury instructions were fair, and the verdict was one a reasonable jury could reach.

The appellants were convicted of second degree murder for stabbing a plainclothes police officer to steal his vehicle.

They appealed their convictions, arguing that the Crown's failure to disclose that two other surveillance officers were drinking outside the jurisdiction during the incident violated their right to full disclosure and constituted an abuse of process.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the conviction appeals, finding the undisclosed information would not have affected the trial's fairness or the credibility of the responding officer.

The Court also dismissed the sentence appeals, upholding parole ineligibility periods of 16 and 18 years due to the need to denounce the murder of an on-duty police officer and the appellants' violent criminal records.