Lida Sara Nouraie

The Crown appealed a majority decision of the Quebec Court of Appeal upholding a stay of proceedings in favour of the accused for violation of the s. 11(b) Charter right to be tried within a reasonable time.

The Supreme Court applied the Jordan framework to characterize two disputed delay periods.

The Court held that an 84-day delay was attributable to the defence due to the illegitimate manner in which counsel brought a late motion for an unredacted copy of the information, but that a 112-day delay could not be entirely attributed to the defence given institutional delay and the trial judge's lack of initiative.

After apportioning the second period, the net delay still exceeded the 30-month Jordan ceiling at 950 days.

The appeal was dismissed and the stay of proceedings upheld.

The Crown appealed a conditional sentence imposed on an offender convicted of historical sexual offences (gross indecency) committed between 1979 and 1987.

The conditional sentence had not existed at the time the offences were committed, was available for a discrete intermediate period, but was no longer available under the sentencing provisions in force at the time of sentencing in 2017.

The majority held that s. 11(i) of the Charter confers a binary right — entitling an offender only to the lesser of the punishments applicable at the time of the offence and at the time of sentencing — and not a global right to the least onerous punishment available at any point in the intervening interval.

The dissent would have dismissed the appeal as moot following the respondent's death and would have upheld 30 years of consistent judicial interpretation giving s. 11(i) a global reading.

The appeal was allowed, though no new sentence was imposed given the respondent's death.

The appellant sought an extension of time to appeal historical guilty-plea convictions entered between 1996 and 2005, after later being found unfit to stand trial because of intellectual disability.

A majority of the provincial appellate court refused the extension.

The Supreme Court held there was no reversible error in that refusal and dismissed the appeal, adopting the majority appellate reasons.

A dissenting justice would have granted the extension and remitted the matter.

The appellant was convicted of second degree murder following a jury trial.

The issue on appeal was whether the trial judge's charge to the jury was unfair because the judge provided opinions on the evidence while summarizing the theory of the defence.

The Supreme Court of Canada unanimously agreed with the dissenting judge in the Quebec Court of Appeal that the trial judge's charge compromised the fairness of the trial, and ordered a new trial.