Eric S. Neubauer

The appellant was convicted by jury of second degree murder in the shooting death of a drug dealer.

He appealed on two grounds: (1) that the trial judge erred in rejecting evidence regarding an alternate suspect, and (2) that the trial judge erred in instructing the jury on party liability through aiding.

The Court of Appeal upheld the conviction, finding that the trial judge properly excluded the alternate suspect evidence as lacking sufficient probative value, and that while references to aiding may have been unnecessary, the jury charge read as a whole would not have misled the jury regarding the requirement that the appellant be a principal or joint principal with the requisite mental state.

The defendant, a personal support worker, was tried on charges of assault and possession of methamphetamine arising from events on July 8, 2015.

The defendant was caring for an elderly, bedridden complainant when she went into medical distress and was hospitalized for three days.

The Crown alleged the defendant assaulted the complainant while intoxicated on illicit drugs.

The trial involved multiple adjournments and procedural complexities, including a commission evidence hearing and a Khelawan application regarding the complainant's videotaped statement.

The defendant was found guilty of both offences, though the assault conviction was limited to the act of aggressively pulling up the complainant's disposable underwear, rather than the alleged hair-pulling and punching.

A young person was charged with assault, criminal harassment, and sexual assault of a complainant.

The defence brought a motion under section 278 of the Criminal Code seeking production of diary excerpts from the complainant.

The Crown had mistakenly disclosed the diary excerpts to the defence.

The court applied the framework from R. v. Shearing to determine that once the information had already been produced, the section 278 regime for compelled production of third-party records was no longer applicable.

The court dismissed the section 278 application but ordered re-disclosure of the excerpts pursuant to the Crown's Stinchcombe disclosure obligations, without prejudice to the Crown raising admissibility objections based on probative value versus prejudicial effect.

Mandeep Punia was charged with second-degree murder and Skinder Punia with accessory after the fact to murder.

The jury found Mandeep guilty of manslaughter and Skinder guilty of accessory to manslaughter.

This decision provides the judge's reasons for several trial rulings: (a) the effect of a registrar's error during peremptory challenges in jury selection, which was deemed procedural and saved by s. 643(3) of the Criminal Code; (b) the refusal to issue a Vetrovec warning for a crucial Crown witness (Supinder Litt) due to her non-unsavoury character, though a strong caution was given; (c) the refusal to give a Bero instruction regarding incomplete police recordings, as no deliberate failure to preserve evidence was found, but the jury was instructed that reasonable doubt could arise from the absence of evidence; and (d) the decision to leave the defence of provocation with the jury for Mandeep, finding an "air of reality" to the subjective element based on the totality of evidence, despite the defence not actively advancing it.