Wrongful conviction

The appellant media organisation challenged a publication ban issued by the Manitoba Court of Appeal over an affidavit filed in wrongful conviction proceedings.

The affidavit concerned the death of a witness and contained highly sensitive personal information about the witness's spouse.

Applying the three-branch test from Sherman Estate v. Donovan, 2021 SCC 25, the Court held that court openness posed a serious risk to the spouse's dignity as an important public interest, the ban was necessary and not overbroad, and the benefits of the ban significantly outweighed its minimal effect on free expression and the open court principle.

The affidavit was not admitted as evidence and played no role in determining that a wrongful conviction had occurred.

The appellant was convicted of sexual assault against a friend of his and his long-time girlfriend.

The case rested largely on the complainant's recognition of the appellant as a man she saw standing in a doorway for several seconds immediately after waking up in a dark room, and on the appellant's equivocal responses when confronted by his girlfriend about the allegations.

The Court of Appeal found that the trial judge erred in law by instructing the jury that recognition evidence of a known person is different from identification evidence of a stranger, when in fact recognition evidence is subject to the same frailties and risks.

The trial judge also erred by failing to instruct the jury on the dangers of relying on reaction evidence, particularly where the accused was confronted with vague allegations and given no details of the specific conduct alleged.

The conviction was set aside and a new trial ordered.

The defendant, Ontario, brought a motion to transfer the plaintiff's civil action for wrongful conviction from Toronto to Woodstock.

The plaintiff had been wrongfully convicted of manslaughter in Woodstock in 1971 and spent over three years in prison before being exonerated in 2015.

The court applied the holistic balancing test under Rule 13.1.02 of the Rules of Civil Procedure.

Finding that the plaintiff's damages were sustained outside Woodstock and that forcing him to return to the site of his wrongful conviction would be unjust, the court dismissed the motion, preserving the plaintiff's presumptive right to choose the venue.

The plaintiff, who was wrongfully convicted of murder and later acquitted, brought an action against police officers and the Attorney General for malicious prosecution and negligence.

The plaintiff moved to amend his statement of claim to add allegations of negligence against Crown attorneys for failing to disclose evidence.

The court dismissed the motion with respect to the negligence claims, holding that Crown attorneys are immune from civil suits based in negligence, and that the only tenable cause of action against them is for malicious prosecution.

Following the dismissal of a civil action alleging negligence and wrongdoing by police and the Crown arising from a historic murder conviction later quashed, certain police defendants sought substantial indemnity costs against the plaintiff.

The court considered the extraordinary circumstances of the case, including the miscarriage of justice that resulted in the plaintiff serving decades in prison and the role of state actors in the events leading to that outcome.

Although the action had been dismissed as an abuse of process due to the inability to re-litigate factual findings already determined by the Court of Appeal and the prejudice caused by the passage of time, the court held that ordering costs would be unfair and contrary to the interests of justice.

Exercising its discretion, the court declined to award costs to the successful defendants.

The Crown charged two defendants with assault causing bodily harm to Christopher Marcos, who was savagely beaten outside a nightclub in Toronto's Entertainment District on June 18, 2011.

The victim recalled little of the incident and could not identify his assailants.

The Crown's case rested entirely on the testimony of four Toronto Police Service officers who claimed to have witnessed the assault.

The sole issue was the identity of the perpetrators.

The defendants did not testify.

The court found that while the police witnesses may have observed an assault, their evidence fell short of the standard of proof beyond reasonable doubt required for conviction due to significant inconsistencies in their accounts, the problematic manner in which their notes were prepared collaboratively, and the absence of any blood evidence on either defendant despite the victim being severely bloodied.