The accused brought an application seeking production of police occurrence reports and related records concerning the complainant during the period covered by the indictment for multiple assault-related offences.
The defence argued the records could demonstrate that the complainant’s alleged injuries were caused by someone else and were relevant to credibility.
The court considered whether the records were governed by first-party disclosure under Stinchcombe or the third-party records regime under O’Connor and ss. 278.1–278.9 of the Criminal Code.
The court held that police occurrence reports created during police investigations do not attract the reasonable expectation of privacy protected by the O’Connor regime.
The Crown was therefore required to disclose the records subject to standard screening, redactions, privilege claims, and relevance.
