Robert Hubbard

The Crown sought to introduce historical text messages sent by the accused to his wife, which were obtained by police pursuant to a valid general warrant.

The accused sought to exclude the messages on the basis of spousal privilege under s. 4(3) of the Canada Evidence Act and s. 189(6) of the Criminal Code.

The court dismissed the application, holding that spousal privilege is a testimonial privilege that protects a spouse from being compelled to testify, but does not render the communications themselves inadmissible when independently and lawfully obtained by police.

The appellant appealed his convictions and sentence relating to possession of a restricted firearm.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the unreasonable verdict ground, finding sufficient circumstantial evidence of possession.

However, the court allowed the appeal on count four (possession of a firearm obtained by crime), finding the trial judge incorrectly answered a jury question by stating that acquiring a firearm without a licence constitutes obtaining it by crime.

An acquittal was entered on count four.

The court declined to reduce the global sentence based on the acquittal but increased the pre-sentence custody credit by two months, finding the trial judge misunderstood the concept of earned remission in the federal system.

The United States sought the extradition of the appellant for child luring based on internet communications traced to an IP address.

The extradition judge committed the appellant for extradition after inferring that the appellant was the user of the IP address at the relevant time because he was the subscriber.

The Court of Appeal held that this inference was unreasonable without further evidence linking the subscriber to the actual use of the device at the time of the offence, and quashed the committal order.

The Court also dismissed a constitutional challenge to the ex parte gathering and sending provisions of the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act, finding they contained adequate safeguards to satisfy procedural fairness under the Charter.

The Crown appealed a judicial stay of proceedings granted at its own request during a pre-trial abuse of process motion.

The stay was requested after the motion judge ordered the production of communications between police investigators and Crown counsel, over which the Crown asserted solicitor-client privilege.

The Court of Appeal held that the Crown's appeal was not an abuse of process and that the motion judge correctly found no waiver of privilege by the police.

However, the Court concluded that the motion judge's disclosure order was premature, as solicitor-client privilege should only be abrogated as a last resort if a stay could not be granted without the privileged information.

The appeal was allowed and the matter remitted to the trial court.

The applicant sought to re-open ex parte proceedings under the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act (MLACMA) that resulted in Gathering and Sending Orders.

The applicant alleged material non-disclosure by the Attorney General regarding the legality of search warrants, the need for disclosure in extradition proceedings, warrantless seizure of subscriber information, and the authority to detain seized items.

The court found no material non-disclosure that would have altered the outcome or justified granting the applicant notice and standing at the MLACMA hearings.

The application to re-open was dismissed.

The appellant appealed his conviction following a guilty plea in the Ontario Court of Justice.

The Crown had elected to proceed by indictment on hybrid offences, and the appellant elected to be tried in the Ontario Court.

The Court of Appeal found no basis to interfere with the convictions, noting the appellant had already served his sentence.

The three accused, former senior executives of Nortel Networks Corporation, were charged with two counts of fraud over $5,000.

The Crown alleged that they deliberately misrepresented Nortel's financial results by manipulating accrued liability balances to meet earnings targets and trigger bonus payments.

The court conducted a detailed review of Nortel's accounting practices, the use of accrued liabilities, and the restatements of its financial results.

The court found that the Crown failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused deliberately misrepresented the financial results or that the financial statements were materially misstated.

The accused were found not guilty on both counts.

The appellant, a police informer, had their identity and confidential information inadvertently recorded during a police interview.

The police and Crown failed to verify the appellant's informer status or redact the transcript, resulting in the full interview being disclosed to defence counsel in another case.

The appellant suffered retribution in custody.

The trial judge dismissed the appellant's application for a stay of proceedings.

On appeal, the Court of Appeal found the conduct of the police and Crown amounted to gross negligence and breached the absolute class privilege of informers.

The appeal was allowed and a stay of proceedings was entered.

The appellant appealed his conviction for fraud on the public, arguing the trial judge provided inadequate reasons, failed to instruct herself on the dangers of unconfirmed evidence, and rendered inconsistent verdicts.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding the trial judge's decision rested on independent evidence establishing the appellant's intent to defraud by inflating revenue figures.

The court also found the verdicts were not inconsistent, as the fraudulent intent was formed after the loans were made but before the public relied on the false financial statements.

The Crown's appeal of the acquittals was dismissed as abandoned.

The appellants, a newspaper and its journalists, received an allegedly forged document from a confidential source implicating the Prime Minister in a conflict of interest.

The police obtained a search warrant and assistance order to seize the document and its envelope to identify the source through forensic testing.

The appellants challenged the warrant, claiming a constitutional or common law journalist-source privilege.

The Supreme Court of Canada held that while s. 2(b) of the Charter does not provide a blanket constitutional immunity for journalists, a case-by-case privilege may be established using the Wigmore criteria.

On the facts, the public interest in investigating the serious crime of forgery outweighed the public interest in protecting the confidential source.

The search warrant and assistance order were upheld as reasonable under s. 8 of the Charter.

The Crown appealed a trial judge's order dismissing an application under s. 37 of the Canada Evidence Act and ordering the disclosure of edited police files relating to a confidential informer.

The accused, charged with weapons offences after a police stop based on an informer's tip, sought the files to challenge the search under the Charter.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, holding that the trial judge erred in finding that the edited documents would not tend to identify the informer.

Given the precise details provided by the informer, the pool of potential informers was very small, and any disclosure risked violating informer privilege.

The appellant appealed his committal for extradition to Germany and applied for judicial review of the Minister of Justice's decision to surrender him.

Germany sought the appellant's extradition on charges of tax evasion, fraud, forgery, and bribery related to secret commissions earned from international arms and aircraft sales.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding sufficient evidence to justify committal and holding that the double criminality rule was satisfied for the tax offences.

The Court also dismissed the application for judicial review, concluding that the Minister did not err in interpreting the extradition treaty, assessing the evidence, or finding that surrender would not be unjust or oppressive.

The appellant was convicted of second-degree murder for shooting his wife 13 times and was sentenced to life imprisonment with 15 years of parole ineligibility.

On appeal, he argued that the trial was rendered unfair because the Crown retained and obtained notes from a psychiatrist initially consulted by the defence, breaching privilege.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the conviction appeal, finding that privilege was likely waived and no prejudice resulted since the Crown did not lead the evidence.

The Court also dismissed arguments regarding jury instructions on automatism, section 16, and reasonable doubt.

However, the sentence appeal was allowed, and parole ineligibility was reduced to 13 years because the trial judge improperly relied on unproven hearsay evidence of a prior attempted murder as an aggravating factor.

The appellants were committed for trial on charges arising from the alleged misuse of funds of a rape crisis line to pay legal costs.

They applied for certiorari to quash their committals, which was largely dismissed by the reviewing judge.

On appeal, the Court of Appeal found no error, affirming that there was some evidence upon which a properly instructed jury could find guilt.

The court also upheld the extension of the timeframe for the charges against one appellant, finding it covered a series of connected acts.

The appeals were dismissed.

The appellant appealed his conviction for second-degree murder and his sentence, arguing primarily that the trial judge's pre-Lifchus jury instruction on reasonable doubt contained reversible error.

The majority held that although the charge improperly suggested reasonable doubt had its ordinary meaning and failed to state that probable guilt was insufficient, the charge as a whole substantially complied with Lifchus because it strongly linked reasonable doubt to the presumption of innocence and clearly framed the self-defence issue.

A dissenting judge would have ordered a new trial on the basis that the combined misdirection and non-direction created a reasonable likelihood that the jury misunderstood the burden of proof.

The sentence appeal was also dismissed.

The appellant, facing a Canadian drug charge, was subsequently indicted in the United States for similar offences carrying a ten-year minimum sentence.

On the morning of his Canadian trial, the Crown stayed the proceedings and the appellant was arrested on an extradition warrant.

The appellant argued that the Crown's earlier offer to stay extradition in exchange for a guilty plea to the Canadian charge constituted egregious misconduct.

The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the appeal, finding no lack of good faith or abuse of process by the Crown.