The accused brought a pre-trial application seeking exclusion of evidence obtained from his cell phone following his arrest for possession of stolen property.
Police arrested the accused after discovering a stolen vehicle near a group of individuals, despite minimal evidence connecting him to the vehicle.
The court held that the arrest lacked reasonable and probable grounds and that the accused’s detention and seizure of his phone were unlawful.
Police further breached the accused’s Charter rights by retaining the phone after his unconditional release to continue investigating a suspected robbery conspiracy.
Applying the s. 24(2) framework from Grant, the court found the Charter breaches serious and excluded the phone evidence and all derivative evidence.
