Gregory Lafontaine

The applicant sought an order under ss. 462.34(1) and 462.34(4) of the Criminal Code for the return of $99,475 in seized Canadian currency to cover reasonable legal expenses.

The primary issue was whether the applicant was required to apply for Legal Aid funding as a prerequisite.

The court, informed by R. v. Rafilovich, found that requiring a Legal Aid application would conflict with the statutory objectives of providing access to counsel and upholding the presumption of innocence, especially given the applicant's desire for counsel of choice.

The court was satisfied that the applicant had an interest in the seized property and no other available assets or means.

The application for the return of funds for legal expenses was granted, with the reasonableness of the expenses to be determined at a subsequent in camera hearing.

Siavash Norouzian was charged with heroin trafficking and possession of proceeds of crime.

The Crown's case relied heavily on the testimony of an undercover officer, Detective Constable Gazey, and Sergeant Sutton.

However, forensic phone data contradicted Detective Constable Gazey's sworn evidence regarding phone calls, voice identification, and text messages, leading the court to find him not credible and unreliable.

Sergeant Sutton's evidence was also deemed unreliable due to lost notes and delayed report writing.

The court emphasized the importance of reliable forensic evidence in challenging police testimony and the Crown's burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Given the significant credibility and reliability issues with the key Crown witnesses, Mr. Norouzian was acquitted of all charges.

The appellant appealed summary conviction convictions for driving with a blood alcohol concentration over 80 and breaching an undertaking requiring zero blood alcohol while driving.

He argued that, after being arrested on the bail breach and asserting the right to counsel, police were required to hold off from making a roadside ASD demand, and further argued that the trial judge erred in the Grant analysis by understating both the seriousness and impact of the Charter breaches.

The appeal court held that the implied s. 1 limitation on s. 10(b) recognized in roadside impaired-driving screening jurisprudence continued to permit the ASD demand notwithstanding the prior arrest on the separate offence.

The court also upheld the trial judge’s assessment that the s. 8 and s. 10(b) breaches were not deliberate or systemic and that their impact on the appellant’s protected interests was limited.

The conviction appeal was dismissed.

The accused was stopped by police while driving on a highway.

The officer detected the smell of marijuana and air freshener, and subsequently observed marijuana shake in plain view, leading to the accused's arrest.

A search of the vehicle yielded significant quantities of marijuana, cocaine, and cash.

The accused brought a Charter application alleging violations of his rights under ss. 8, 9, 10(a), and 10(b).

The court found a s. 10(b) violation because the officer elicited an admission from the accused before providing a reasonable opportunity to consult counsel.

Applying the Grant framework under s. 24(2), the court excluded the accused's admission but admitted the physical evidence, finding the drugs and money were discoverable independent of the breach.

The appellant, convicted of drug trafficking offences, had previously obtained a judicial order returning seized funds to pay for reasonable legal expenses under s. 462.34(4)(c)(ii) of the Criminal Code, having demonstrated no other assets or means.

At sentencing, the Crown sought a fine instead of forfeiture under s. 462.37(3) equal to the returned amount.

The majority held that, as a general rule, sentencing judges should not impose a fine instead of forfeiture on funds judicially returned for the payment of reasonable legal expenses, as doing so would undermine Parliament's secondary purposes of providing access to counsel and giving meaningful weight to the presumption of innocence.

The discretion to impose a fine may be exercised only where the offender lacked a real financial need or did not use the funds to alleviate that need.

The dissent would have imposed the fine in lieu unless the offender could demonstrate a constitutional entitlement to state-funded counsel under the Rowbotham test.

The offender pleaded guilty to serious sexual offences against three male victims aged 14, 15, and 17-18 years old.

The offences included sexual assault, sexual interference, luring, and transmission of sexually explicit material.

The offender, aged 41-42 at the time of the offences, engaged in grooming behaviour, provided money and substances to the victims, and used online platforms to facilitate contact.

The court imposed a global sentence of 7.5 years in the penitentiary, with credit for pre-trial custody and enhanced credit for harsh detention conditions.

The court rejected the Crown's proposed range of 8-10 years, finding that the absence of a position of trust and the guilty pleas warranted a more moderate sentence within the 5-9 year range.

Three defendants applied for orders staying criminal proceedings on the grounds that their right to be tried within a constitutionally tolerable time had been breached.

The applicable ceiling for Ontario Court of Justice cases is 18 months.

The Crown argued that when defence delay periods were subtracted, the total delay did not exceed the ceiling.

The court found that two applicants' delay did not exceed the 18-month threshold after deducting defence delay caused by their decision to change counsel.

For the third applicant, although the delay exceeded the Jordan guidelines by nine days, the court found exceptional circumstances existed that rebutted the presumption of unreasonable delay.

All three applications were dismissed.

The applicant challenged the issuance of a DNA warrant on the grounds that the Information to Obtain contained inaccurate information regarding observations of the applicant engaging in drug trafficking activity and exiting a specific unit.

The court found that two aspects of the ITO should be excised as they were not supported by the original surveillance evidence.

However, the court determined that even with these excisions, there remained sufficient basis to authorize the seizure of the applicant's DNA based on other evidence, including CCTV footage showing the applicant using a fob associated with the unit, observations of the applicant leaving with a suspected drug trafficker, and possession of a key to the unit where a firearm was found.

The application was dismissed.

The defendants brought applications under section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to challenge the lawfulness of search warrants executed on three apartment units.

Thanh Nguyen lacked standing to challenge the search of the Sherway location as he had no reasonable expectation of privacy in a unit he was merely permitted to use as a guest.

Catherine Vu and Kevin Tran challenged the search of the Lakeshore location where Vu was the tenant.

The court found the warrant for the Lakeshore location was issued without reasonable grounds to believe evidence would be found there, as the connection between Tran and the residence was insufficient to establish more than occasional guest status.

The search violated section 8 rights.

However, under the R. v. Grant analysis, the evidence was admitted as the police acted in good faith, the state conduct was not improper, and society's interest in adjudication on the merits outweighed the privacy breach.

The accused brought a Charter application to exclude evidence seized from his vehicle, arguing a six-hour delay in accessing counsel violated his s. 10(b) rights.

The court found the police violated the accused's s. 10(b) rights due to inadequate resource allocation, which constituted a serious institutional disregard for Charter rights.

The evidence was found to be temporally and contextually connected to the breach.

Applying the *Grant* factors, the court concluded that admitting the evidence would bring the administration of justice into disrepute, thus excluding the heroin and other items seized from the vehicle.

Charles Chun appealed his conviction for operating a motor vehicle with a blood alcohol level over 80 mg, arguing a breach of his s. 10(a) Charter rights and an error by the trial judge in declining to exclude evidence under s. 24(2).

The Superior Court of Justice, applying a standard of deference to the trial judge's factual findings and s. 24(2) analysis, found that the trial judge's characterization of the events leading to the breath demand was reasonable.

Despite a s. 10(a) Charter breach, the trial judge's application of the Grant analysis was upheld, concluding that the breach was not trivial, but police acted in good faith and the impact on the appellant's interests was minimal.

The appeal was dismissed, affirming the conviction.

The accused, Sabrullah Khan, was charged with trafficking heroin.

The Crown's case was entirely circumstantial, relying on the transfer of a package containing 991.36 grams of heroin to an individual (Mr. Rilling) whom Khan did not know, in suspicious circumstances.

The central issue was whether the Crown proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Khan knew the package contained heroin or was wilfully blind to its contents.

The court considered the totality of circumstantial evidence, including the absence of direct evidence and the evidence that Mr. Hatemi (the drug network leader) often employed "blind couriers." The court found that while an inference of knowledge was reasonable, it was not the *only* reasonable inference, as it was also plausible that Khan was an unwitting courier.

Consequently, the Crown failed to prove knowledge or wilful blindness beyond a reasonable doubt, and Khan was found not guilty.

The appellant appealed both conviction and sentence following his guilty plea to 12 counts of fraud.

The appellant sought to set aside his guilty pleas on grounds of involuntariness and inadequate legal advice, and challenged the trial judge's finding of unreasonable delay under s. 11(b) of the Charter.

The Court of Appeal dismissed both appeals, finding the guilty pleas were voluntary and informed, and that the appellant was foreclosed from advancing the s. 11(b) argument once the guilty pleas were upheld.

On sentencing, the court upheld an eight-year federal penitentiary sentence, a restitution order of $6,261,632, and a fine of $6,261,632 in lieu of forfeiture, finding the sentence appropriate given the large-scale, sophisticated Ponzi-like fraud scheme, prior fraud-related criminal record, and significant aggravating factors.

The appellant appealed his convictions for multiple drug trafficking offences and sought leave to appeal his sentence.

The charges stemmed from two indictments: the first arising from a warrantless police entry into a hotel room, and the second from subsequent search warrants based on information obtained from cell phones seized during the hotel room entry.

The trial judge found the hotel room entry violated s. 8 of the Charter but admitted all evidence under s. 24(2), finding the breach was mitigated by police good faith and the appellant's reduced expectation of privacy.

The appellant was convicted of all charges and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.

The Court of Appeal dismissed both the conviction appeal and the sentencing appeal.

The appellant, Robert Strmota, appealed his conviction for driving with a blood alcohol content exceeding 80 mg, arguing that his s. 9 Charter right to be free from arbitrary detention was violated when he was stopped in a private parking lot during a R.I.D.E. program.

The trial judge had dismissed the Charter application, finding the stop lawful for sobriety checks, even on private property, based on common law powers and road safety concerns.

The Superior Court of Justice dismissed the appeal, affirming that police officers have common law power to detain motorists for sobriety checks, even on private property, without reasonable suspicion, particularly in the context of a R.I.D.E. program aimed at road safety.

The appellant was convicted of various drug offences and possession of proceeds of crime.

On appeal, he challenged the trial judge's decision to dismiss his application to exclude evidence obtained through a search warrant, arguing that the information to obtain the warrant (ITO) was insufficient to establish reasonable and probable grounds that evidence would be found at the specified residence.

The Court of Appeal upheld the conviction, finding that the information provided by confidential sources regarding the appellant's drug trafficking activities was sufficiently corroborated and that the trial judge properly exercised discretion in finding reasonable and probable grounds to issue the warrant.

The appellant appealed her convictions on two counts of impaired operation causing bodily harm, two counts of driving over 80 causing bodily harm, and two counts of dangerous driving causing bodily harm.

The charges arose from a motor vehicle accident in which the appellant's vehicle overturned after she failed to negotiate a curve.

The central issue on appeal concerned the trial judge's instruction to the jury regarding the W.(D.) direction as it applied to the appellant's statement at the accident scene: "I don't know what happened.

My car just lost control." The Court of Appeal found that while the initial charge was adequate, the recharge contained serious errors in the application of the W.(D.) direction, particularly the omission of the second and third branches of the instruction in the recharge, which constitute non-direction amounting to misdirection on a critical aspect of the defence.

The appellant was convicted of attempted fraud over $5,000 and sentenced to five months' imprisonment and 30 months' probation.

He appealed both conviction and sentence.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the conviction appeal, finding the trial judge's credibility findings and analysis of evidence were fair and even-handed.

However, the court allowed the sentence appeal based on clarification of the law regarding immigration consequences of conditional sentences by the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Tran.

The court substituted the custodial sentence with an 18-month conditional sentence.

Application for bail pending appeal from convictions for bribery, attempt to obstruct justice, criminal breach of trust, and trafficking cocaine, with a sentence of 13 years' imprisonment less 6 months' credit.

The applicant sought to establish that his appeal was not frivolous, that he would surrender himself into custody, and that his detention was not necessary in the public interest.

The court found that while the applicant's grounds of appeal were not frivolous and he would likely surrender himself, his detention was necessary in the public interest given the gravity of the offences, the aggravated circumstances of their commission, and the weakness of the grounds of appeal.

The application was dismissed and the appeal was expedited.

The appellant, a psychologist, was convicted by jury of two counts of impaired operation of a motor vehicle causing bodily harm following a two-vehicle collision.

She appealed on multiple grounds, including Charter violations, credibility assessments, jury charge errors regarding straddle evidence, and prosecutorial misconduct.

The Court of Appeal dismissed all grounds of appeal, finding no Charter breaches, no reversible credibility errors, and no miscarriage of justice despite some improper prosecutorial conduct.