In a criminal trial for second-degree murder, the Crown sought to admit an unavailable witness's prior police statements for their truth.
Necessity was conceded, but the motion turned on threshold reliability under the principled hearsay exception.
The court held that the earlier audio statements lacked adequate procedural safeguards and that the later video statement, considered as a whole, was not so reliable that contemporaneous cross-examination would add little or nothing.
The court rejected the Crown's attempt to sever and admit only corroborated portions of the statement and dismissed the hearsay application.
