Court of Appeal for Ontario

Date: 2024-12-17 Docket: COA-24-CR-0097

Before: Fairburn A.C.J.O., Trotter and Zarnett JJ.A.

Between: His Majesty the King, Respondent and N.R.A., Appellant

Counsel: Marianne Salih, for the appellant Anjali Rajan, for the respondent

Heard and released orally: December 9, 2024

On appeal from the conviction entered by Justice Patricia Moore of the Superior Court of Justice, dated February 28, 2023.

Reasons for Decision

[1] This is an appeal from convictions for assault and sexual assault. The appellant claims that the trial judge erred by failing to provide sufficient reasons for rejecting the evidence of motive to fabricate and by engaging in improper propensity reasoning.

[2] As for motive, we see no error. While somewhat brief, the trial judge’s reasons for rejecting this motive to fabricate evidence and the various alleged motives, when read against the record as a whole, and placed in their proper context, are adequate.

[3] As for the second ground of appeal, that the trial judge engaged in improper propensity reasoning, we disagree. The appellant maintains that the trial judge erroneously focused in on what she described as the appellant’s controlling behaviour. The appellant disputes that there was an evidentiary foundation supportive of this conclusion. The complainant’s evidence, however, specifically lays the foundation for this finding, and there was no objection to this evidence when it was elicited.

[4] The appellant also suggests that the trial judge erred by using that conclusion, specifically as it related to the controlling behaviour, to find that he was more likely to have assaulted the complainant. In fact, all the trial judge said was:

Overall, I find that the evidence does demonstrate that during the relationship [the appellant] attempted to control various aspects of [the complainant’s] movements and behaviour. Of course, this is not an offence in and of itself – but does lend some confirmation to [the complainant’s] testimony that sexual assaults were just one aspect of controlling behaviour.

[5] We see nothing in this passage to suggest that the trial judge engaged in improper propensity reasoning. The trial judge was using the evidence of control as one of the many contextual factors to assess the competing narratives before her.

[6] The appeal is dismissed.

Fairburn A.C.J.O. Gary Trotter J.A. B. Zarnett J.A.

[1] This appeal is subject to a publication ban pursuant to s. 486.4 of the Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-46.