The Ontario Court of Justice declared a mistrial in a criminal proceeding against the accused, who had been found guilty of aggravated assault.
The mistrial was initiated by the court prior to sentencing due to a finding of ineffective assistance of counsel.
Defence counsel had failed to call a qualified expert to support the accused's automatism defence, which was based on an epileptic seizure, due to a fundamental misunderstanding of the legal requirement for expert evidence in such defences.
The court found that this error rendered the trial fundamentally unfair and constituted a miscarriage of justice, as the defence could not have succeeded without the required expert testimony.
