James Duncan Lockyer

The appellant was convicted of manslaughter and designated a dangerous offender after rejecting a pre-trial plea offer from the Crown.

On appeal, he argued that the trial judge erred in excluding the entirety of his spontaneous exculpatory statements made upon arrest, in instructing the jury on reasonable doubt and automatism, and in failing to stay the dangerous offender application as an abuse of process.

The Court of Appeal held that while spontaneous exculpatory statements upon arrest may be admissible if the accused testifies, the trial judge's exclusion of the statements did not cause a substantial wrong or miscarriage of justice.

The court also found no errors in the jury instructions and held that the dangerous offender application was not an abuse of process.

The appeal was dismissed.

The appellant was convicted of sexual assault in 1995 based on the testimony of a single witness.

After a remand from the Supreme Court of Canada, the Court of Appeal considered the admissibility of fresh evidence.

The Court found that trial counsel provided ineffective assistance by failing to use available evidence that could have undermined the credibility of the Crown's sole witness, including evidence of a motive to lie and failure to report the incident.

The Court admitted the fresh evidence, allowed the appeal, quashed the conviction, and ordered a new trial, concluding that the ineffective assistance resulted in a miscarriage of justice.

The appellant was convicted of first degree murder after stabbing a man during an altercation.

On appeal, he challenged the Crown's re-examination of a key witness and the trial judge's jury instructions on provocation, post-offence conduct, and planning and deliberation.

The Court of Appeal found that while the verdict of first degree murder was not unreasonable, the trial judge erred by failing to relate the evidence to the legal definition of planning and deliberation, particularly given the tenuous factual basis for first degree murder.

The court set aside the first degree murder conviction and substituted a conviction for second degree murder.

The appellant was convicted of infanticide in 1999 based on the expert pathology evidence of Dr. Charles Smith, who opined that her four-month-old son was smothered.

Following the Goudge Inquiry, fresh expert evidence conclusively refuted Dr. Smith's findings, demonstrating that the child likely died of accidental asphyxia in an unsafe sleeping environment.

The Crown conceded that the fresh evidence should be admitted and the conviction quashed.

The Court of Appeal admitted the fresh evidence, set aside the conviction, and entered an acquittal, noting the profound miscarriage of justice.

The appellant, convicted of sexual assault against his wife, brought a motion under s. 683(1)(b) of the Criminal Code to cross-examine her in aid of a fresh evidence application on appeal.

The appellant sought to introduce evidence of the complainant's post-conviction allegations and conduct in family court proceedings to show she fabricated the sexual assault allegations to secure child custody.

The Court of Appeal granted the motion, finding it arguable that the fresh evidence could affect the result, and ordered the cross-examination subject to strict conditions to protect the complainant.

The appellants, members of the Hells Angels, were convicted of extortion and extortion in association with a criminal organization after threatening a victim over an alleged debt while wearing club colours.

They appealed their convictions, arguing that the criminal organization provisions of the Criminal Code are unconstitutionally vague and overbroad.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding that the terms 'facilitation' and 'in association with' are well-understood and not impermissibly vague or overbroad.

The court also upheld the trial judge's finding that the appellants deliberately invoked their membership in the organization to inspire fear, and affirmed the sentence imposed.

The applicant, whose conviction for first degree murder was set aside and a new trial ordered, sought a review of a decision denying him judicial interim release.

The Court of Appeal found that the application judge erred in denying bail on the secondary and tertiary grounds.

Given the applicant's previous compliance with bail conditions for five and a half years, his age, the weakness of the Crown's case, and the presumption of innocence, the Court concluded that his detention was not necessary for public safety or to maintain confidence in the administration of justice.

The application for release was granted.

On a ministerial reference concerning a 1972 murder conviction, the court considered whether previously undisclosed police information about a potentially exculpatory alibi and witness statements, and new expert reports about false confessions, were admissible as fresh evidence.

The majority held that the alibi-related material and related witness information were admissible under the Palmer framework because they could reasonably have affected the verdict, although the Crown's non-disclosure did not render the 1972 trial unfair under the disclosure standards then prevailing.

The majority rejected the recent expert reports as not truly fresh, finding that their substance had already been before the jury through trial experts.

Treating the matter as an appeal, the majority quashed the conviction and ordered a new trial; one judge dissented on the first question and would have refused admission of the fresh evidence.

The appellant was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for 20 years.

At trial, the defence argued that the main Crown witness was the actual shooter and attacked the integrity of the police investigation.

The trial judge permitted the lead detective to provide an investigative narrative to confirm the Crown witness's evidence.

On appeal, the appellant challenged the admission of this investigative narrative, the explanation for why a witness was not called, and the admission of prior consistent statements.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding that the defence's attack on the investigation justified the Crown's response and that the trial judge properly instructed the jury on the limited use of the evidence.

The 20-year parole ineligibility period was also upheld given the appellant's violent criminal record.

The appellants appealed their convictions.

The Crown conceded that the trial judge erred in foreclosing the appellants from challenging the factual underpinnings of the counselling to commit murder charges for which the appellant Vanderheyden stood convicted.

The Court of Appeal agreed, noting that the counselling convictions provided a significant boost to the credibility of two unsavoury witnesses.

The court found that the curative proviso could not be applied, as it could not be satisfied that Vanderheyden would not have testified had the trial judge ruled differently.

The appeal was allowed, convictions set aside, and a new trial ordered.

The Crown appealed the total sentence of seven years and a $250,000 restitution order imposed on the respondent for his involvement in a $2.7 million armoured car theft and subsequent cocaine trafficking offences committed while on bail.

The Court of Appeal found the sentencing judge erred in principle by imposing an inadequate sentence for the drug offences and by failing to explain the totality reduction and the low restitution amount.

The appeal was allowed, the total sentence was increased to nine years, and the restitution order was increased to $1 million.

The appellant pleaded guilty in 1989 to break and enter and assault, serving eight months in jail.

Almost twenty years later, fresh evidence revealed that another individual committed the offences.

The appellant appealed his conviction with the consent of the Crown.

The Court of Appeal admitted the fresh evidence, set aside the guilty pleas, and entered acquittals, noting the dangers of mistaken eyewitness identification and the court's discretion to set aside a guilty plea in the interests of justice to prevent a miscarriage of justice.

The appellant, an airport employee, was convicted of drug importation offences based largely on intercepted telephone calls in Jamaican Patois.

At trial, the judge instructed the jury that they need only be satisfied of the voice identification and the accuracy of the English translations on a balance of probabilities.

On appeal, the Court of Appeal held that this was a misdirection, as it improperly invited the jury to apply a lower standard of proof to individual pieces of evidence on a piecemeal basis before considering the evidence as a whole on the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt.

The appeal was allowed and a new trial ordered.

The appellant was convicted of first-degree murder after the deceased was found in a submerged vehicle.

At trial, the Crown relied on unchallenged toxicology evidence suggesting the deceased died within 15 to 20 minutes of his last drink, supporting the theory of a planned murder.

On appeal, the appellant sought to introduce fresh toxicology evidence, conceded as correct by the Crown, showing the trial expert's time estimate was scientifically unsound.

The Court of Appeal applied the Palmer test and admitted the fresh evidence, finding it could reasonably be expected to have affected the jury's verdict.

The appeal was allowed, the conviction quashed, and a new trial ordered.

The appellant was convicted of various assault and firearms-related offences arising from a robbery and shooting at an auto repair shop.

He appealed his convictions and sentence, arguing the trial judge misdirected the jury on the permissible uses of out-of-court statements made by the victim and his brother, and that the trial judge's review of the appellant's statement on arrest was unfair.

He also appealed his seven-year sentence.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the conviction appeal, finding no error in the jury instructions, which were responsive to the defence's position at trial.

The sentence appeal was also dismissed, as the sentence was fit given the brutal nature of the shooting and the appellant's lengthy criminal record.

The appellants were convicted of various offences, including murder and criminal negligence causing death, relating to the death of their infant son.

The convictions were largely based on the expert testimony of a Crown witness.

Following the dismissal of their appeals by the Court of Appeal, fresh expert evidence became available that discredited the Crown's expert.

The Supreme Court of Canada admitted the fresh evidence and ordered a new trial on all counts, finding that the unreliable expert evidence was central to the Crown's case and could have affected the jury's verdicts on both the homicide and non-homicide charges.

The appellant was wrongfully convicted of first-degree murder of his four-year-old niece in 1993 based on flawed pathology evidence.

Following a reference by the Minister of Justice, the Court of Appeal heard fresh expert evidence conclusively demonstrating that the deceased was neither sexually assaulted nor murdered, and that the trial experts were wrong.

The Court admitted the fresh evidence, quashed the conviction, and entered an acquittal, but declined to issue a formal declaration of factual innocence, holding that Canadian law does not recognize such a verdict.

On a ministerial review reference treated as a conviction appeal, the court admitted fresh forensic pathology and archival evidence undermining the reliability of the original time-of-death evidence that had been central to the Crown’s theory of exclusive opportunity.

Applying the fresh evidence framework, the court held that the conviction, as affirmed on the earlier reference, could no longer stand and amounted to a miscarriage of justice.

At the remedial stage, the court undertook an extensive review of the historical record, expert evidence, archival material, and the practical impossibility of a retrial.

Although an acquittal was not the only conceivable verdict, the court concluded that an acquittal was clearly the more likely result at a hypothetical new trial and entered that remedy.

The appellant was convicted of first degree murder.

The Crown's case relied heavily on the testimony of the deceased's wife, with whom the appellant was having an affair, who claimed the appellant confessed to the murder.

The appellant appealed his conviction on several grounds, including the trial judge's instructions on forensic testing, the admission of intercepted phone calls, the admission of video re-enactments and lay opinion evidence, the adequacy of the Vetrovec warning, and instructions on after-the-fact conduct.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding no reversible errors in the trial judge's rulings or jury instructions.

The appellants appealed an order refusing to quash their committal to stand trial for first degree murder.

They argued there was insufficient evidence of planning and deliberation, pointing to an intervening act where the victim's colleague opened fire on them.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding that evidence of prior communication, arriving in a convoy, rushing the victim while armed, and the nature of the attack provided a sufficient basis for a properly instructed jury to infer planning and deliberation.