Kenneth Grad

The appellant was convicted of first degree murder following a seven-week jury trial.

This was his second trial on the charge; his prior conviction had been overturned by the Court of Appeal in 2013.

The Crown's case relied heavily on the testimony of Mark Yegin, a witness of questionable credibility who testified that he witnessed the appellant and Shant Esrabian shoot the victim, Hussein El-Hajj Hassan, in a secluded rural area west of Ottawa in August 2004.

The Crown's theory was that the appellant orchestrated the murder in retaliation for the victim's decision to purchase drugs directly from a supplier, thereby cutting the appellant out of the sales chain.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal and ordered a new trial, finding multiple legal errors in the trial judge's charge to the jury.

The appellant was convicted of two counts of conspiracy to traffic in a controlled substance following a complex multi-party prosecution involving 23 individuals charged on a 65-count information.

The trial took place approximately 41.5 months after the charges were laid.

The appellant appealed on two grounds: first, that the delay breached his Charter rights under s. 11(b) pursuant to the principles established in R. v. Jordan; and second, that evidence obtained from wiretap authorization should have been excluded because the issuing justice for the initial dial number recorder warrants demonstrated reasonable apprehension of bias by providing correspondence to the police officer seeking clarification on the Information to Obtain.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding that the trial judge correctly attributed the delay and that the delay fell below the presumptive ceiling when accounting for discrete exceptional circumstances, complexity, and transitional circumstances.

The court also found no reasonable apprehension of bias, as the issuing justice's correspondence sought appropriate clarification to assess the reliability of information rather than directing the drafting of the warrant application.

The Ontario Media Development Corporation (OMDC) denied Pong Marketing and Promotions Inc.'s application for a digital media tax credit on the grounds that its sweepstakes games were developed primarily to promote the sale of phone cards rather than to educate, inform, or entertain users.

The Divisional Court majority found the OMDC's decision unreasonable, holding that "primary purpose" must be assessed from the user's perspective rather than the developer's motivation.

The Court of Appeal allowed the OMDC's appeal, finding that the OMDC's interpretation was reasonable and that the Divisional Court erred in applying a residual presumption in favour of the taxpayer.

The appellant appealed his convictions for six counts of sexual assault and two counts of assault of a minor victim, as well as his six-year sentence.

The victim alleged that the appellant sexually and physically assaulted her over a two-year period when she was 14-15 years old and he was 44.

The trial judge convicted the appellant on six counts of sexual assault and two counts of assault after finding the victim's evidence credible and rejecting the appellant's denials.

The appellant raised three grounds of appeal on conviction: misapplication of the burden of proof, misapprehension of the significance of the victim's diary, and erroneous assessment of the victim's testimony according to standards applicable to young persons.

On sentencing, the appellant argued the trial judge relied on inadmissible evidence and failed to apply the principle of parity.

The appellate court dismissed both the conviction and sentence appeals.