A police officer was charged with perjury, obstructing justice, and breach of trust arising from testimony he gave in Provincial Offences Court during a traffic prosecution.
The officer had testified that he personally obtained and wrote a cautioned statement from a motorist, when in fact another officer had written the statement.
The court accepted that the testimony was objectively false but found the Crown failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the officer intentionally misled the court or knew the statement was false at the time he testified.
Evidence showed multiple administrative errors by other officers and the prosecutor, and the accused plausibly believed he had taken the statement after discovering the original document in his file while testifying months later.
The court concluded the false testimony resulted from a mistaken assumption rather than deliberate deception.
