Heather Pringle

The appellant appealed his conviction for aggravated assault and his sentence.

The sole issue at trial was the identification of the attacker.

The Court of Appeal found that while the verdict was not unreasonable, the cumulative effect of several trial errors necessitated a new trial.

These errors included inadequate jury instructions on the frailties of eyewitness and in-dock identification, improperly allowing a prior unadopted statement to be considered for its truth, and admitting inadmissible police opinion evidence regarding the correctness of the arrest.

The appellant was convicted of one count of trafficking in a narcotic, based entirely on the evidence of a single witness.

The trial judge had acquitted the appellant on three charges of sexual assault and another trafficking charge, finding that the same witness had deliberately fabricated those allegations to avoid paying a debt.

On appeal, the Court of Appeal held that the conviction was unreasonable, as there was no clear or logical basis for the trial judge to accept the witness's evidence on the one charge after rejecting the rest of her testimony as fabricated.

The appeal was allowed and an acquittal entered.