Joseph Kupfert Heller

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 applicant brought a motion to stay proceedings for driving while under suspension and failing to properly wear a seatbelt, alleging a breach of his section 11(b) Charter right to be tried within a reasonable time.

The Crown argued the matter should be assessed under the Morin framework, while the applicant relied on the newly released Jordan framework establishing an 18-month presumptive ceiling for provincial court cases.

The court found that although the total delay was 17 months and 1 day, the case became significantly more complex mid-proceedings when the Crown discovered the defendant had multiple driver's licences that had been merged by the Ministry of Transportation.

The court held that the time spent on judicial pre-trial conferences constituted inherent time requirements of the case and that the Crown had acted expeditiously throughout.

The motion to stay was dismissed.