Michelle Psutka

The appellant appealed his convictions for incest and sexual interference against his daughter, as well as the lifetime SOIRA registration order imposed at sentencing.

He argued the trial judge erred in excluding evidence of a prior allegation, assessing the complainant's inconsistent testimony, and evaluating phone and DNA records.

He also sought to introduce fresh evidence of the complainant's post-trial recantation to impeach her credibility.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the conviction appeal, finding no errors in the trial judge's rulings and concluding the fresh evidence was not sufficiently cogent to have changed the result.

However, on consent of the Crown, the Court granted a Charter remedy reducing the lifetime SOIRA order to 20 years following the Supreme Court's decision in Ndhlovu.

The United States sought the extradition of the respondent for child luring offences.

The respondent successfully applied for a stay of the extradition proceedings, arguing that the failure of domestic police and Crown to disclose communications with US authorities during his prior domestic prosecution constituted an abuse of process.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal and set aside the stay, holding that the extradition judge exceeded his jurisdiction.

The alleged misconduct lacked a sufficient nexus to the committal hearing, and the concerns raised fell within the exclusive purview of the Minister of Justice at the surrender stage.

The applicant, sought for extradition by the United States on serious drug trafficking and money laundering charges, applied for a review of a detention order denying him judicial interim release.

The application judge had denied bail primarily on the primary ground, finding a high risk of flight due to the applicant's unexplained wealth and the unreliability of his proposed sureties.

The Court of Appeal found no reviewable error in the application judge's assessment of the evidence, including the applicant's finances, the bail letter, and the proposed sureties.

A motion to adduce fresh evidence of an arthritis diagnosis was also dismissed.

The application for review was dismissed.

The appellant challenged a jury conviction for sexual interference on the basis that the trial judge wrongly admitted a young child's hearsay statement under the principled exception and permitted the jury to use it as similar fact evidence across counts.

The court held that the trial judge failed to identify and analyze key hearsay dangers, including the risk of maternal misinterpretation of non-verbal gestures and the risk that the statement was shaped by leading and suggestive questioning.

Applying the threshold reliability framework, the court concluded contemporaneous cross-examination could have materially assisted the truth-seeking process and that reliability was not sufficiently established.

Because the impugned statement may have influenced the conviction on the surviving count, the conviction was set aside and a new trial ordered.

The appellant appealed his conviction for sexual assault, arguing the trial judge failed to resolve reliability concerns regarding the complainant's testimony and misapprehended material evidence by confusing details between two separate sexual assault allegations.

The Court of Appeal found that the trial judge's reasons, read as a whole, adequately explained the differing verdicts for the two incidents, noting that the convicted offence was reported immediately unlike the acquitted offence which relied on a recovered memory.

The Court concluded that while the trial judge made a factual error regarding which incident involved an admission of embarrassment over a forgotten detail, this misapprehension did not play an essential part in the reasoning process leading to the conviction.

The appellant appealed his convictions for sexual assault and sexual interference involving a 15-year-old complainant.

He argued the trial judge provided insufficient reasons by failing to adequately resolve inconsistencies in the complainant's testimony.

The Court of Appeal dismissed this ground, finding the trial judge's reasons sufficiently demonstrated he had seized the substance of the issue and properly assessed the core events.

However, on consent of the Crown, the Court stayed the sexual assault conviction pursuant to the Kienapple principle due to its factual and legal nexus with the sexual interference conviction.

Two appellants, addicted to fentanyl, set fire to a rowhouse using Molotov cocktails at the direction of their fentanyl dealer, killing three occupants and seriously injuring a fourth.

Both pleaded guilty to three counts of manslaughter and one count of arson causing bodily harm and received sentences of 16 and 17 years respectively, plus $250,000 restitution orders each.

The Court of Appeal found no error in the sentencing judge's treatment of mitigating factors including addiction and mental health, and held the sentences were not demonstrably unfit.

However, the court quashed the restitution orders, finding the sentencing judge failed to weigh the appellants' ability to pay and imposed them as a mechanical afterthought.

Fresh evidence of post-sentencing cooperation with authorities was not admitted.

The applicant, sought for extradition to the United States on charges related to money laundering for a violent drug trafficking organization, applied for a publication ban on the identities and identifying information of his proposed sureties prior to his bail hearing.

The Attorney General opposed the ban on names, occupations, and relationships to the accused, arguing it infringed the open court principle.

The court applied the Sherman Estate test and found that the applicant established a serious risk to the safety of the sureties and the public interest in ensuring safe participation in the justice system.

The court granted the publication ban, subject to review upon the conclusion of the bail hearing.

The appellant appealed his convictions for impaired driving causing death and criminal negligence causing death arising from a fatal ATV accident.

The appellant was towing the deceased's disabled ATV using a short fabric sling when his vehicle drifted left, causing the tow strap to become caught and the deceased's ATV to flip, resulting in her death.

The trial judge found the appellant was impaired by alcohol, engaged in an inherently dangerous towing operation without proper concentration, and that his conduct constituted a marked and substantial departure from the standard of a reasonable driver.

The Court of Appeal dismissed all grounds of appeal, finding no material misapprehension of evidence, no error in the trial judge's treatment of expert and lay evidence regarding the tow setup, and that causation was properly established for both offences.

The appellant appealed convictions for failing to comply with an animal welfare order and challenged the dismissal of its Charter stay motion for abuse of process.

The appeal argued that the prosecution became abusive after the Ministry issued a revocation notice, and that the motion judge misinterpreted s. 30(5) of the governing statute and conflated the abuse-of-process inquiry with the stay analysis.

The court held that the offences had crystallized before the revocation, that the statutory scheme did not nullify prior non-compliance, and that the prosecution did not offend societal notions of fair play and decency.

Although the justice of the peace conflated aspects of the abuse and stay analyses, the appeal court found no reversible error and in any event applied the curative proviso under the Provincial Offences Act.

The appeal was dismissed.

The Court of Appeal for Ontario dismissed the Crown's appeal from a directed verdict of acquittal on a charge of accessory after the fact to murder.

The court found that the evidence did not support leaving the charge to the jury on the basis of wilful blindness, as there was no basis for a reasonable jury to find that the respondent knew or was wilfully blind to the fact that the victim had died.

The court also held there was no air of reality to the included offence of being an accessory after the fact to attempted murder, as the evidence established the victim died and there was no live issue as to causation.

The Court of Appeal for Ontario dismissed N.S.'s appeal from convictions for sexual assault and sexual interference.

The appellant argued that the trial judge failed to consider his mixed out-of-court statements and erred in finding that Crown witnesses corroborated each other.

The Court found no reversible error, holding that the trial judge properly assessed the evidence and did not misuse the concept of corroboration.

The decision clarifies the use of mixed out-of-court statements and the proper approach to corroborative evidence in sexual offence trials.

The Court of Appeal for Ontario dismissed Samer Al-Akhali’s conviction appeal for sexual assault but allowed his sentence appeal, reducing his penitentiary sentence from five years to three.

The court found that the trial judge properly rejected the defence of honest but mistaken belief in communicated consent, and that the trial was procedurally fair.

However, the trial judge erred by not giving sufficient weight to the principles of rehabilitation and restraint applicable to youthful first-time offenders.

The appellate court emphasized that, while denunciation and deterrence are important in serious sexual assault cases, rehabilitation and restraint must be prioritized for young, first-time offenders, and the sentence must be proportionate and individualized.

The United States sought to extradite the applicant for child luring offences.

The applicant brought a motion to stay the extradition proceedings, arguing abuse of process.

The court found that the provincial Crown breached the applicant's section 7 and 8 Charter rights during a prior domestic prosecution by failing to disclose ongoing interactions with US authorities and by sharing his computer hard drive without limitations.

This misconduct prejudiced the applicant, who pleaded guilty domestically without knowing his full jeopardy.

The court concluded this was one of the clearest of cases where a stay of proceedings was necessary to protect the integrity of the justice system.

The appellant was convicted of drug and firearm offences.

He appealed his conviction, arguing that the search warrant used to obtain evidence was improperly issued.

Specifically, he contended that the Information to Obtain (ITO) was misleading and that tips from confidential informants (CIs) and an anonymous caller were not sufficiently compelling, credible, or corroborated to establish reasonable and probable grounds.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding that the trial judge correctly applied the legal test for reviewing search warrants and the `Debot` criteria for assessing CI reliability.

The court concluded that the issuing justice had reasonable and probable grounds to issue the warrant, even if certain information in the ITO were excised.

The appellant appealed a sexual assault conviction, alleging trial judge errors in the jury charge regarding the W.(D.) instruction on consent and the consideration of absence of injury.

The Court of Appeal found no misdirection, affirming that the trial judge's consent instruction, read holistically, was not misleading, and that the absence of injury was not a contradiction given the complainant's testimony and lacked a common sense inference of injury from pain alone.

The appeal was dismissed.

The applicant sought judicial review of the Minister of Justice's order to surrender him to the United States for trial on charges of sexual exploitation of children and interstate communication-extortion.

The applicant argued the surrender was unreasonable, unjust, oppressive, and violated his Charter rights under sections 7 and 6, and that the Minister unreasonably declined to seek assurances regarding potential civil commitment in the U.S. The Court of Appeal upheld the Minister's decision, finding it reasonable and entitled to substantial deference.

The Court concluded that the potential sentence disparity and civil commitment process in the U.S. did not render the surrender unjust, oppressive, or a violation of Charter rights, and that the Minister's decision to not seek assurances was also reasonable.

The appellant, David Charizanis, appealed a 12-month custodial sentence.

The Court of Appeal found that the trial judge was entitled to conclude that the sentence was fit and appropriate, having considered all operative principles, including restraint, and appropriate weight to mitigating factors.

The appeal was dismissed.

The appellant, Laura Coristine, appealed her convictions for six counts of assault against her ex-husband, Jim Quinn.

She argued that the trial judge misapprehended her evidence and erred in assessing the complainant's credibility.

The Court of Appeal found that while the trial judge did misapprehend some minor aspects of the appellant's evidence, these errors did not amount to a miscarriage of justice given the overall assessment of credibility.

The court also found no reversible errors in the trial judge's assessment of the complainant's credibility, including his consideration of the complainant's motive to lie, the "unusual" nature of some allegations, and the proper use of notes as an aide mémoire.

The appeal was dismissed.

The applicant sought an extension of time to file a notice of appeal, leave to appeal sentence, and a release order pending appeal.

The primary issue was the court's jurisdiction to grant a release order under s. 679 of the Criminal Code, as the applicant had already been released under an invalid Superior Court order.

The court initially refused the release order, holding that the applicant was not in "custody" for the purposes of s. 679 while released under the invalid order.

The court granted the release order only after the applicant surrendered into physical custody, clarifying that an invalid release order remains binding until negated by due process or surrender.