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Certiorari denied where alleged trial errors were reviewable by appeal.
The applicant sought the extraordinary remedy of certiorari to quash a completed criminal trial in which he had been required to represent himself after an adjournment request was denied.
The applicant argued that the denial of the adjournment and the requirement to proceed without counsel amounted to a denial of natural justice and jurisdictional error.
The court held that the trial judge’s decision to deny the adjournment was an exercise of judicial discretion within jurisdiction.
Because the merits of the case had been tried and findings were made on the essential elements of the offences, the proper remedy was an appeal rather than certiorari pursuant to s. 776 of the Criminal Code.
The application for certiorari was therefore dismissed.
The accused was convicted of impaired driving and refusing a breath demand after feigning attempts to provide a sample and failing to establish Charter breaches.
The accused was charged with impaired operation of a motor vehicle and failure or refusal to comply with a breath demand.
The accused challenged the arrest and breath demand on Charter grounds, alleging lack of reasonable and probable grounds and breach of right to counsel.
The court found reasonable and probable grounds existed for the arrest and that the accused's right to counsel was adequately protected despite officers remaining visible outside a partially open hospital observation room door.
The court found the accused guilty of failure to comply with the breath demand based on his willful and voluntary failure to provide an adequate sample, and guilty of impaired driving based on the totality of the evidence and the adverse inference from his refusal to provide a breath sample.
Unreliable in‑dock identification cannot support conviction without corroborative evidence.
The accused was charged with two counts of attempted murder and one count of robbery arising from a late‑night stabbing outside a convenience store.
During closing submissions, the Crown sought convictions for aggravated assault as included offences.
The Crown relied primarily on in‑dock identifications by two victims and an eyewitness, along with a co‑accused’s video statement and circumstantial evidence allegedly linking the accused to the driver.
The court found significant discrepancies in the eyewitness descriptions and emphasized the well‑recognized frailties of first‑time in‑court identification, particularly where prior photo line‑ups failed to produce identifications.
Finding the identification evidence unreliable and the remaining evidence insufficient to establish identity beyond a reasonable doubt, the court acquitted the accused.
Video-taped police interview of recanting co-accused admitted for truth; agreed statement of facts excluded.
During a trial for attempted murder and robbery, the Crown applied to admit two prior statements of a recanting co-accused for the truth of their contents under the principled exception to the hearsay rule.
The first statement was an Agreed Statement of Facts from the co-accused's guilty plea, and the second was a video-taped police interview.
The court dismissed the application regarding the Agreed Statement of Facts, finding it lacked threshold reliability as the co-accused had not personally assented to it and pleaded guilty solely to be released.
However, the court granted the application to admit the video-taped interview, finding that the ability to observe demeanour, the availability of cross-examination, and corroborating evidence established threshold reliability.
