Patrick Clement

The Crown applied to call a police detective as an expert witness on street gangs in a first-degree murder trial.

The accused opposed the application, arguing the expert was biased and the proposed evidence, including rap videos, letters, and graffiti, was highly prejudicial.

The court found the expert evidence necessary and the detective qualified.

The court admitted most of the videos, letters, and graffiti, finding their probative value in establishing motive and the existence of a criminal organization outweighed their prejudicial effect, but excluded evidence of the accused's prior convictions and certain letters.

During a second degree murder trial, the accused sought to admit the contents of an anonymous 911 call identifying another individual as the person who stabbed the victim.

The proposed evidence was hearsay and did not fall within a traditional exception, so admissibility depended on the principled approach requiring necessity and threshold reliability.

Although necessity was established because the anonymous caller could not be identified or cross‑examined, the court found the circumstances of the call lacked sufficient indicia of reliability.

Unlike emergency 911 calls made contemporaneously with ongoing events, the call occurred more than two hours after the incident and the caller deliberately avoided accountability.

The court held that admitting the evidence would effectively abandon the threshold reliability requirement for hearsay and therefore ruled the call inadmissible.

The defendant was charged with thirteen counts of firearm possession and three counts of robbery with a firearm arising from a home invasion on December 24, 2011.

At the preliminary inquiry, the Crown sought committal on the robbery with firearm charges.

The defendant conceded committal on the possession counts.

The court found sufficient evidence to commit the defendant to trial on the robbery with firearm charges based on the doctrine of recent possession, the timing of the defendant's acquisition of the stolen firearms within hours of the robbery, and circumstantial evidence suggesting prior knowledge of the robbery.

The accused brought a pre‑trial motion under s. 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms seeking exclusion of a firearm seized during execution of a search warrant at his residence.

The defence argued that the Information to Obtain failed to establish reasonable grounds for the warrant and that the evidence should be excluded under s. 24(2).

The court held that the issuing justice could properly have concluded that reasonable grounds existed based on corroborated confidential informant information and police surveillance showing apparent hand‑to‑hand drug transactions.

The court further held that even if a Charter breach had occurred, the firearm would be admitted under the s. 24(2) framework from R. v. Grant because police acted in good faith and the evidence was reliable and central to the prosecution.