Court of Appeal for Ontario

Date: 2024-10-24 Docket: COA-23-CR-0313

Before: Roberts, Copeland and Dawe JJ.A.

Between: His Majesty the King, Respondent and Traequan Mahoney, Appellant

Counsel: Mark Halfyard, for the appellant Ken Lockhart, for the respondent

Heard and released orally: October 22, 2024

On appeal from the conviction entered by Justice John Krawchenko of the Superior Court of Justice on June 3, 2021.

Reasons for Decision

[1] The appeal turns on whether the court accepts that the trial judge misapprehended aspects of the evidence. The appellant focusses on two aspects of the evidence: first, the evidence of the female eyewitness as to the number of intruders that initially entered the home; second, the appellant’s evidence about where the Range Rover was parked.

[2] We are not persuaded that trial judge misapprehended the evidence. The findings he made were available on the record. Nor did he err in assessing the strong circumstantial case against the appellant.

[3] In any event, even if the trial judge did misapprehend any of this evidence, these errors did not “play an essential part the reasoning process resulting in conviction” in the sense described in Morrissey and Lohrer: R. v. Morrissey (1995), , 97 C.C.C. (3d) 193 (Ont. C.A.), at p. 221; R. v. Lohrer, 2004 SCC 80, 2004 3 S.C.R. 732, at paras. 2-3. In other words, even if there was a misapprehension of either of the two aspects of the evidence raised by the appellant – which we do not accept – we are not persuaded that the trial judge’s reasoning process leading to conviction was infected by any error. This is made clear in paragraph 38 of the reasons, where the trial judge summarized a number of aspects of the evidence that led him to conclude, on the totality of the evidence, that the Crown had proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the appellant was a party to the offences.

[4] The appeal is dismissed.

“L.B. Roberts J.A.”

“J. Copeland J.A.”

“J. Dawe J.A.”