Laura Hodgson

The appellant was convicted of sexual assault with a weapon and forcible confinement based primarily on eyewitness identification by the complainant.

The appellant appealed, arguing the verdict was unreasonable and that the trial judge misapprehended the alibi evidence.

The Court of Appeal found that the trial judge erred in her application of the W.(D.) framework by compartmentalizing the evidence and misapprehended several key pieces of defence evidence.

Concluding that the identification evidence displayed numerous indicia of unreliability and the alibi evidence was strong, the Court allowed the appeal, set aside the conviction, and entered an acquittal.

The appellant appealed his conviction and sentence.

He argued the trial judge erred in refusing to grant a mistrial after a juror received outside information, and in refusing a directed verdict regarding the continuity of a blood sample.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the conviction appeal, finding no error in the trial judge's rulings.

However, based on fresh evidence of the appellant's deteriorating health, the sentence appeal was allowed and the sentence varied to two years less a day to be served conditionally.

The appellant pleaded guilty to extortion, theft, and failure to comply.

The trial judge rejected a joint submission for a one-year sentence and two years' probation, instead imposing a three-year sentence, citing the 'atrocious' nature of the facts involving chat lines.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, holding that the trial judge erred by summarily rejecting the joint submission without explaining how it was contrary to the public interest or would bring the administration of justice into disrepute.

The sentence was varied to reflect the joint submission.

The respondent pleaded guilty to encouraging animal fighting.

The sentencing judge rejected a joint submission and imposed a harsher sentence.

The respondent appealed the sentence to the summary conviction appeal court.

The SCAC judge, finding the sentencing judge erred in calling a witness, invited the respondent to amend the notice of appeal to appeal the conviction and ordered a new trial.

The Crown appealed.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, holding that under s. 687(1) of the Criminal Code, a court hearing an appeal from sentence alone has no jurisdiction to order a new trial.

The conviction was restored and the matter remitted to the SCAC for review of the sentence.

The Crown appealed an order staying historical indecent assault and sexual assault charges against a physician based on the loss of a complainant's signed police statement.

The court held that, although it was open to the trial judge to find the statement was lost through unacceptable negligence, the prejudice analysis was flawed because the lost statement was assessed in isolation rather than in light of multiple other available statements and prior sworn testimony.

The court held that the missing statement made the defence task more difficult but did not render the trial fundamentally unfair or bring the administration of justice into disrepute.

The loss of the statement also did not amount to abuse of process in the absence of bad faith or prosecutorial misconduct.

The stay was quashed and a new trial ordered.

The appellant appealed convictions for three counts of fraud under $5,000 and sought leave to appeal sentence.

He argued that the original trial could not properly proceed by summary conviction, despite defence consent, and challenged both the sufficiency of the evidence and the fitness of sentence.

The court held that s. 786(2) of the Criminal Code is procedural and authorized the mode of proceeding adopted, with no resulting jurisdictional defect.

It further held that the evidence supported the convictions and that the sentence was fit.

The conviction appeal was dismissed, leave to appeal sentence was granted, and the sentence appeal was dismissed.

The appellant sought leave to appeal sentence after pleading guilty to criminal negligence causing death arising from alcohol-impaired, high-speed driving through multiple red lights, causing a fatal collision.

The court held that this offence does not lend itself to a fixed sentencing range because it may be committed in an almost infinite variety of factual circumstances, although alcohol-related cases have attracted increasing severity over time.

Given the appellant’s extreme moral blameworthiness, prior record, and the need for denunciation and general deterrence, the five-year penitentiary sentence and 15-year driving prohibition were not clearly unreasonable.

Leave to appeal sentence was granted, but the appeal was dismissed.

The appellant appealed a conviction for sexual assault and a sentence of six months' imprisonment.

The court held that the trial judge made two errors in assessing the complainant's evidence: using jointly reconstructed evidence about age to bolster credibility, and failing to test credibility and reliability against the improbability of the alleged incident occurring in a public park in broad daylight.

Taken together, those errors rendered the verdict unsafe.

The appeal was allowed, the conviction was set aside, and a new trial was ordered.