Meghan Whittaker Scott

A 19-year-old defendant pleaded guilty to assault with a weapon, failure to comply with recognizance, and criminal harassment.

The offences occurred over seven hours on October 14, 2013, when the defendant confined his former girlfriend, threatened her with a shank made from scissors, stabbed her arm causing a permanent scar, bit her face, and obstructed her breathing while she was asthmatic.

The defendant was on bail at the time and breached his curfew conditions.

The court sentenced the defendant to 11 months in custody, with credit for 87 days of pre-trial custody at a 1.5:1 ratio, resulting in 200 days remaining to be served.

The defendant was placed on two years probation with conditions including non-association, weapons prohibition, and mandatory counseling.

In a homicide prosecution, the Crown sought to introduce several hearsay statements attributed to a deceased victim and to unidentified bystanders during a fight.

The court considered whether the statements fell within the res gestae exception to the hearsay rule and whether they satisfied reliability requirements under the principled approach articulated in R. v. Khelawon.

The court admitted a statement reported by a witness that the victim said “Budja stabbed me” and described others holding him down, finding it spontaneous and proximate to the startling event and not so unreliable as to warrant exclusion.

However, statements allegedly shouted by unidentified bystanders during the fight were ruled inadmissible for the truth of their contents because the declarants were unknown and reliability could not be assessed.

Those statements were admissible only for the non-hearsay purpose of demonstrating what may have been audible to the accused during the altercation.

The applicants sought judicial review of a decision by the Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Appeal Tribunal, which upheld the cancellation of their tobacco production quota for alleged illegal sales.

The Divisional Court quashed the decisions of both the Board and the Tribunal, finding that the Tribunal failed to apply the required standard of clear and convincing proof for quasi-criminal allegations and relied on insufficient evidence.

The Court also found a reasonable apprehension of bias because an adjudicator from the initial Board hearing testified as a prosecution witness before the Tribunal.