Joanne K. Stuart

The applicant, charged with impaired and dangerous operation causing death and bodily harm following a boating accident, sought a stay of proceedings alleging abuse of process.

The Crown had preferred a direct indictment after a preliminary inquiry had been scheduled.

The applicant argued this was done for an oblique motive to deprive him of discovery.

The court dismissed the application, finding the applicant failed to meet the notoriously high evidentiary threshold required to displace the presumption that the Crown exercised its core prosecutorial discretion in good faith.

The appellant was convicted of two counts of sexual assault and one count of gross indecency against his niece and nephew.

He appealed on the basis that his Charter right to trial within a reasonable time under section 11(b) was violated.

The trial lasted 660 days from the swearing of the information to the end of closing submissions, exceeding the Jordan threshold of 548 days by 112 days.

The trial judge dismissed the section 11(b) application, finding that after deducting defence delay and exceptional circumstances, the net delay fell just short of the threshold.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, finding that the trial judge made errors in calculating defence delay and pandemic-related delay.

After correcting these errors, the net delay was 571 days, exceeding the Jordan threshold by 23 days.

The court set aside the convictions and stayed the proceedings.

The appellant appealed his convictions for possessing a firearm, carrying a concealed firearm, and carelessly storing a firearm.

The Crown's case was entirely circumstantial.

The trial judge found that the appellant had joint possession of a firearm his brother displayed during an altercation at a McDonald's, based on the appellant's position and actions.

The trial judge also found the appellant was a party to the careless storage of two firearms discovered in an alley after police pursuit.

The Court of Appeal upheld the convictions, finding the trial judge properly applied the legal principles governing circumstantial evidence and that her findings and inferences were reasonably available on the evidence.

The Court of Appeal for Ontario dismissed Samer Al-Akhali’s conviction appeal for sexual assault but allowed his sentence appeal, reducing his penitentiary sentence from five years to three.

The court found that the trial judge properly rejected the defence of honest but mistaken belief in communicated consent, and that the trial was procedurally fair.

However, the trial judge erred by not giving sufficient weight to the principles of rehabilitation and restraint applicable to youthful first-time offenders.

The appellate court emphasized that, while denunciation and deterrence are important in serious sexual assault cases, rehabilitation and restraint must be prioritized for young, first-time offenders, and the sentence must be proportionate and individualized.

The appellant appealed his convictions for sexual assault and uttering threats, arguing his right to a fair trial was compromised by his inability to hear the proceedings, that the trial judge erred in assessing a witness's credibility regarding text messages, and that the transcript record was incomplete.

The Court of Appeal admitted fresh evidence regarding the appellant's hearing but found his claim that he could not hear the trial was not credible, given the accommodations made and his repeated confirmations that he could hear.

The court also deferred to the trial judge's credibility findings and concluded the transcript deficiencies did not prevent a meaningful appeal.

The appeal was dismissed.

The Crown appealed a stay of proceedings granted due to unreasonable delay under s. 11(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, despite the delay being below the Jordan ceiling.

The application judge erred by assessing the reasonableness of the delay against a hypothetical scenario where judicial vacancies were filled, rather than the actual systemic circumstances.

The Court of Appeal clarified that the constitutional yardstick for below-ceiling delays is not an ideal state but the real-world conditions, and that delays due to judicial vacancies, while concerning, are not per se "unreasonable" under s. 11(b) if the overall delay remains presumptively reasonable.

The appeal was granted, the stay set aside, and a new trial ordered.

Cory Crockatt appealed his convictions for breaking and entering, possession of stolen property, and failing to comply with release conditions.

The appeal challenged the trial judge's assessment of identification evidence, the scope of alternative possibilities considered in the circumstantial case for the break-in, and the reasonableness of the stolen car possession verdict.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding no errors in the trial judge's reasoning regarding identification evidence or the circumstantial case, and concluding that the verdict for possession of stolen property was reasonable based on the cumulative evidence.

The appellant, Darryl Rusaw, appealed his conviction for sexual assault.

The trial judge had convicted him of sexually assaulting the complainant S.S. after acquitting him on another charge.

Rusaw argued the trial judge misapprehended evidence regarding his post-incident conversation with a witness and erred in rejecting the defence of honest but mistaken belief in consent.

The Court of Appeal found no fault with the trial judge's assessment of the witness's evidence and upheld the rejection of the mistaken belief defence, citing the trial judge's finding that the appellant took no reasonable steps to ascertain consent from the sleeping complainant.

The appeal was dismissed.

Charles Okito pleaded guilty to kidnapping and robbery.

The court considered aggravating factors (impact on victim, imitation firearm) and mitigating factors (youth, first offence, guilty plea, difficult background, mental health challenges, collateral consequence of deportation).

Applying sentencing principles, including deterrence, denunciation, and rehabilitation, the court imposed a sentence of 42 months' imprisonment before credit for presentence custody, resulting in a further 20 months and 15 days to serve.

The judge also made a DNA order, a lifetime weapons prohibition, and a non-communication order, and waived the victim fine surcharge.

The judge recommended against deportation due to the offender's rehabilitation prospects and lack of support in his home country.

The applicant, charged with first-degree murder, applied for bail pending a retrial ordered by the Court of Appeal.

The court found that the applicant failed to meet his burden to show that his detention was not justified on the secondary and tertiary grounds.

The proposed release plan was deemed insufficient to mitigate the risk of reoffending or interfering with the administration of justice, and the strong circumstantial case against the applicant necessitated his continued detention to maintain public confidence in the administration of justice.

The application for bail was dismissed.

The appellants, Alton Grant and Shaqwan Kawano, appealed their first-degree murder convictions.

The Court of Appeal found that the trial judge erred in instructing the jury on how to assess exculpatory eyewitness identification evidence, specifically regarding a key witness whose testimony arguably contradicted the Crown's theory of identity.

This error was deemed serious and not curable.

The court dismissed Grant's Charter s. 11(b) application for unreasonable delay and found the verdict against him was not unreasonable.

However, due to the misdirection on eyewitness identification, the appeals were allowed, and new trials were ordered for both appellants.

The appellant, an Indigenous man, appealed his ten-year global sentence for multiple violent in-custody assaults, including an aggravated assault that left a victim severely brain-damaged.

He sought to introduce fresh evidence on appeal, including a post-sentencing diagnosis of schizophrenia and a Gladue report that was waived at the original sentencing.

The Court of Appeal admitted the fresh evidence and reconsidered the sentence but concluded that the ten-year global sentence remained fit given the extreme violence, the custodial setting, and the need for denunciation and deterrence.

The appeal was dismissed, save for minor corrections to pre-sentence custody credit and the setting aside of victim fine surcharges.

The young person appealed his convictions for multiple swatting incidents, arguing his right to a trial within a reasonable time under s. 11(b) of the Charter was violated.

The net delay was approximately three years, exceeding the 18-month Jordan ceiling.

The Court of Appeal upheld the trial judge's finding that the delay was justified by the exceptional circumstance of the case's complexity, which involved highly technical computer forensic evidence, voluminous disclosure, and multiple jurisdictions.

The appeal was dismissed.

The Crown appealed the acquittal of the respondent.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal as abated due to the death of the respondent.

The victim of an assault sought leave to intervene in a Crown appeal of a disposition by the Ontario Review Board regarding the accused, who had been found not criminally responsible.

The victim sought to argue for a geographic boundary restriction, an issue the Crown had raised unsuccessfully at the board but did not appeal.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the motion, holding that permitting the victim to intervene would unfairly prejudice the accused by raising an issue not raised by the parties.

The court noted that the victim's concerns had been articulated by the Crown, whose responsibility it is to speak for the community regarding public safety.

The appellant was convicted by a jury of sexual interference and incest.

On appeal, the appellant argued that the trial judge erred by allowing improper cross-examination regarding the complainant's motive to fabricate and by failing to provide a limiting instruction on a prior inconsistent statement.

The Court of Appeal found both errors to be significant and prejudicial, particularly the improper cross-examination which risked shifting the burden of proof, and the lack of instruction on the prior inconsistent statement which could have led the jury to use it for the truth of its contents.

The court rejected the Crown's argument to apply the curative proviso, concluding that the verdict would not necessarily have been the same without these errors.

A new trial was ordered.

An appeal of an Ontario Review Board disposition ordering detention of a not criminally responsible accused at a forensic psychiatric facility.

The appellant sought conditional discharge with residence at his mother's home.

The Court of Appeal found the Board failed in its inquisitorial duty by not adequately exploring whether safeguards could mitigate concerns about attending physicians' understanding of the appellant's specific delusional disorder, and by relying on an unexplained administrative decision denying residence with his mother without requiring justification.

The appeal was allowed and the matter returned to the Board for re-hearing on an expedited basis.

The appellant was convicted of a single count of sexual assault against his then spouse following a judge-alone trial.

He was acquitted of sexual offences against his children.

The appellant appealed his conviction, challenging the trial judge's dismissal of an application to reopen the trial based on fresh evidence.

The fresh evidence consisted of Day Timer entries suggesting the date of the hysterectomy may have been approximately ten months later than the complainant testified.

The Court of Appeal upheld the conviction, finding no error in principle in the trial judge's assessment that the proposed fresh evidence would not have affected the verdict.

The appellant sought leave to challenge refusals to extend time to appeal multiple Part III provincial offence sentences for driving without insurance, relying on fresh evidence of serious mental illness and inability to pay.

The court held that it has jurisdiction under s. 131 of the Provincial Offences Act to hear, with leave, an appeal from a judgment denying an extension of time under s. 85 in a Part III proceeding.

Although the motion judge made no reversible error on the record then before him, the court admitted fresh psychiatric and financial evidence under the Palmer test and concluded that the interests of justice warranted sentence relief.

The total outstanding fines were reduced to $5000 with two years to pay.

The appellant appealed his convictions for break and enter and assault with a weapon, as well as his sentence of five years' imprisonment and a ten-year long-term supervision order.

On the conviction appeal, the appellant argued the trial judge erred in his jury instructions regarding eyewitness identification and the Vetrovec warning for an accomplice's testimony.

The Court of Appeal found no error in the instructions.

On the sentence appeal, the appellant argued he should have received enhanced credit (1.5:1) for pre-sentence custody.

The Court of Appeal held that while the trial judge erred in denying enhanced credit solely because the appellant did not apply for bail, enhanced credit was not warranted because the appellant's extensive criminal record and likelihood of reoffending meant he was unlikely to be granted early release.

Both appeals were dismissed.