Lydia Riva

A young person was charged with sexual assault of a 19-year-old complainant following an incident in a wooded area behind apartment buildings in Scarborough in the early morning hours of July 30, 2016.

The complainant was heavily intoxicated at the time.

The court found that the Crown proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the complainant neither had the capacity to consent nor did she express any consent to the sexual activity.

The court convicted the accused of sexual assault.

Zaheer Ahmad was found guilty of criminal harassment.

The court considered aggravating factors including a history of similar offences, lack of insight, and escalating threats, and mitigating factors such as no contact with the victim post-arrest.

The Crown sought a sentence of two years less a day, plus probation and ancillary orders, while the defence argued for time served (18 months pre-sentence custody) or a suspended sentence.

The court imposed an additional 5 months less one day of incarceration, a three-year probationary period with conditions, a lifetime weapons prohibition, and a restitution order for the victim.

The accused was charged with attempting to obstruct justice by persuading a fellow inmate to fabricate evidence for an appeal of prior convictions.

The Crown relied on letters purportedly written by the accused to the inmate.

The defence argued the inmate fabricated the letters to gain favour and applied for a stay of proceedings due to the loss of original letter exhibits from a previous trial.

The court found beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused authored the letters, based on handwriting analysis and the minute details only the accused could know.

The court denied the stay application, finding no unacceptable negligence in the loss of originals and no actual prejudice to the defence, as authenticated photocopies and other evidence were available for a fair trial.

The appellant, Xueming Yang, appealed his conviction for 'over 80' and failing to stop at a red light, alleging ineffective assistance of trial counsel.

The appellant claimed counsel failed to interview a key witness and file a Charter application regarding arbitrary detention.

The court dismissed the appeal, finding no miscarriage of justice.

It concluded that even if a Charter application had been pursued, there was no reasonable possibility of acquittal because the police officer had reasonable grounds for the traffic stop, and the appellant's credibility was significantly undermined by his immigration motivations for the appeal and inconsistent testimony.

The accused, F.C., was found guilty of sexual assault, sexual touching of a person under 14, and invitation to sexual touching in relation to a person under 14, against his four-year-old great-granddaughter.

The sexual assault conviction was conditionally stayed due to the rule against multiple convictions.

The parties disagreed on the sentence, with the defence seeking a conditional sentence based on Charter arguments (s. 12 and s. 7) due to the accused's advanced age (87) and fragile health, and the Crown seeking an upper reformatory term of actual imprisonment.

The court imposed a nine-month reformatory term of imprisonment, finding it proportionate to the gravity of the offences and the offender's responsibility, while also considering his age and health.

The court declined to rule on the constitutional validity of the mandatory minimum sentence of 45 days as the imposed sentence was significantly higher, and found that the accused's health concerns could be managed in correctional facilities, thus not violating his s. 7 Charter rights.

A three-year probation order and various ancillary orders (DNA, SOIRA, s. 161 prohibition, firearm prohibition, victim surcharge) were also imposed.

Hassan Jarrar was charged with three counts of breaching a section 810.2 recognizance.

The Crown withdrew one count.

The court found Jarrar guilty on two counts: having contact with a female under 16 years of age (K.S.) and breaching curfew.

The court rejected the defence of mistake of fact regarding K.S.'s age, finding Jarrar knew she was 14 and failed to take reasonable steps to ascertain her age.

The court also found Jarrar breached his curfew by staying at a motel with K.S. instead of his designated residence.

The appellant appealed his convictions and sentence for assaulting and disarming a peace officer.

The charges arose after the appellant grabbed the barrel of an officer's machine gun during a dynamic entry execution of a search warrant.

The appellant argued the trial judge erred in applying an objective mens rea standard and provided inadequate reasons for rejecting his testimony.

The Superior Court of Justice dismissed the conviction appeal, finding the trial judge applied the correct subjective standard when reading the reasons as a whole.

The sentence appeal was also dismissed, as the 60-day conditional sentence was not demonstrably unfit given the statutory emphasis on denunciation and deterrence.

In a prosecution for historic and recent sexual offences against two young relatives, the Crown sought to admit several hearsay statements made by a four‑year‑old complainant who was later found incompetent to testify under s. 16.1(3) of the Canada Evidence Act.

The court considered the principled exception to the hearsay rule under R. v. Khan and subsequent jurisprudence, assessing necessity and threshold reliability.

The judge held that the complainant’s statements to her mother shortly after the alleged incidents and again several weeks later were reasonably necessary and sufficiently reliable, given their timing, spontaneous nature, lack of motive to fabricate, child‑like language, and corroborative circumstances including the accused’s response when confronted.

Statements made by the complainant to her brother and to a SickKids interviewer were excluded because they were not reasonably necessary, as they added little beyond the more detailed statements already admitted.

The ruling admitted the mother’s evidence of the child’s disclosures while excluding other hearsay evidence.

The accused was tried on multiple sexual offences alleged against two child complainants who were his great‑grandchildren while he and his wife provided daycare.

The court acquitted the accused on two counts relating to the older complainant, finding the delayed disclosure, reliability concerns, and possible memory contamination created reasonable doubt.

However, the court admitted and relied upon hearsay statements from the younger complainant under the principled exception established in R. v. Khan after finding threshold reliability and necessity.

The statements, corroborating surrounding evidence, and the accused’s own statements and conduct satisfied the court beyond a reasonable doubt that sexual offences occurred against the younger complainant.

The accused’s testimony was rejected as fabricated and unreliable.

The accused was charged with arson for deliberately setting fires at his family home on December 25, 2014, and with breaching a probation order.

The Crown's case relied on circumstantial evidence including the accused's bizarre destructive behavior earlier that morning, his presence in the vicinity of the home shortly before the fire was discovered, his possession of a lighter, and the absence of signs of forced entry.

The defense argued that the circumstantial evidence could not exclude the reasonable possibility that an intruder had set the fires.

The court found that the accused's pattern of destructive conduct throughout the day, combined with the unlikelihood of a random arsonist targeting the home on Christmas Day, established guilt beyond a reasonable doubt on both counts.

The accused was charged with two counts of resisting a peace officer in the execution of his duties and one count of assaulting a peace officer.

The accused was in custody in holding cells and was touching a sprinkler head on the ceiling.

When court officers directed him to stop, he refused.

Officers entered the cell and attempted to restrain him.

The accused was taken to the ground and eventually handcuffed and placed in leg irons.

The Crown alleged the accused bit Officer Mason during the restraint.

The court found significant inconsistencies in the officers' testimony regarding the events that occurred once the accused was on the ground, including conflicting accounts of who was present, how many officers participated, and whether a bite actually occurred.

The court acquitted the accused of the assault charge due to reasonable doubt but convicted him of one count of resisting a peace officer based on his initial failure to comply with the officer's direction to stop touching the sprinkler.

The defendant was charged with sexual interference and sexual assault contrary to sections 151 and 271 of the Criminal Code, arising from an alleged incident on September 22, 2012, in Oshawa.

The complainant, then 13 years old, alleged that the defendant, a 27-year-old friend of her mother, touched her vaginal area over her underwear while she was in her bedroom during a party.

The defendant denied the allegations, initially claiming he had never entered the complainant's bedroom, later changing his account to state he had entered to apologize for noise at the request of the complainant's mother.

The trial judge found the complainant credible and honest, but determined that the identification evidence was weak and unreliable.

Despite suspicions regarding the defendant's guilt based on his inconsistent statements and consumption of alcohol and cocaine, the court found that the Crown had not met its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt and dismissed the charges.

The accused was charged with possession of controlled substances for the purpose of trafficking.

Following an anonymous tip and police surveillance, the accused was arrested without a warrant and his vehicle was searched, yielding cocaine and marijuana.

A subsequent search warrant for his residence yielded further drugs.

The accused brought a Charter application arguing his s. 9 rights were violated as police lacked reasonable and probable grounds for the arrest.

The court found the anonymous tip was unreliable and the observed meetings were neutral, failing to establish objective reasonable grounds.

The court excluded the evidence under s. 24(2) of the Charter, which also invalidated the subsequent search warrant.