The Crown appealed an acquittal for second degree murder arising from a fatal stabbing after key youth witnesses recanted their videotaped police statements implicating the accused.
The Supreme Court reconsidered the orthodox common law rule limiting prior inconsistent statements to credibility use only and held that, for witnesses other than the accused, such statements may be admitted substantively on a principled hearsay basis where reliability and necessity are established through a voir dire.
The majority required threshold guarantees addressing hearsay dangers, while concurring reasons proposed a more flexible reliability framework.
Because the trial judge had considered himself bound by the orthodox rule and had not assessed substantive admissibility under the new approach, a new trial was ordered.
