Paul Slansky

The appellant appealed an order committing him for surrender to the United States for conspiracy to launder proceeds of crime.

The primary issue was whether identification evidence gathered in Canada by a foreign officer and included in the record of the case was admissible under section 32(2) of the Extradition Act without requiring viva voce testimony.

The Court of Appeal held that evidence lawfully gathered in Canada and substantively admissible under Canadian law does not need to take the form of viva voce testimony at the extradition hearing.

The appeal was dismissed.

The appellant appealed his committal for extradition to the United States on narcotics charges and sought judicial review of the Minister's surrender decision.

He argued that the new Extradition Act's evidentiary provisions were unconstitutional, that time limits for the authority to proceed were breached, and that the extradition judge erred in his assessment of the conduct and evidence.

He also challenged the Minister's surrender decision on Charter grounds.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal and the application for judicial review, finding the legislation constitutional, the time limits functionally met, the committal justified by the evidence, and the Minister's surrender decision reasonable.

The appellant appealed her committal for surrender and applied for judicial review of the Minister's surrender order.

She challenged the constitutionality of the new Extradition Act, which the Court of Appeal dismissed based on its previous decision in United States of America v. Yang.

She also argued that the surrender would be unfair and oppressive and that the Minister's reasons were inadequate.

The Court found no substance to her allegations and held that the Minister's reasons were adequate.

The appeal and application for judicial review were dismissed.

The appellant appealed a decision regarding stolen vehicles.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding that information retrieved by a U.S. customs officer from a computer system was not gathered in Canada merely because it referred to Canadian auto thefts.

The Court also found ample evidence of identification and that the vehicles were stolen, noting the appellant had placed false VIN numbers over the original ones.

The appellant applied for judicial review of the Minister of Justice's surrender order and appealed an order under s. 69 of the Extradition Act.

The appellant argued that the Minister's decision constituted an abuse of process, violated s. 6(1) of the Charter, and failed to adequately consider his claims of ill health.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the application and the appeal, finding no air of reality to the abuse of process claim, that the Minister's decision was reasonable under the Charter, and that the medical claims were unsubstantiated.

The appellant was charged with drug offences in Canada and subsequently indicted in the United States.

The Canadian charges were stayed to allow extradition proceedings to the United States to proceed.

The appellant appealed the refusal to set aside the stay of the Canadian charges and the order committing him for extradition, arguing the proceedings were an abuse of process and violated his s. 7 Charter rights.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeals, finding no basis to interfere with the Crown's discretion to stay the domestic charges and concluding that the appellant's abuse of process claims regarding the extradition had no realistic possibility of success.

A related motion for production of documents was also largely dismissed.

The appellant was convicted of the first degree murder of his brother.

The Crown's case relied heavily on circumstantial evidence and the testimony of a jailhouse informant who claimed the appellant confessed to the murder.

On appeal, the appellant argued the trial judge erred in failing to give a Vetrovec warning regarding the informant, misdirected the jury on after-the-fact conduct, and provided an inadequate charge on reasonable doubt.

The Court of Appeal agreed, finding that the informant's severe credibility issues necessitated a Vetrovec warning, the trial judge improperly left equivocal demeanour evidence to the jury as consciousness of guilt, and the pre-Lifchus reasonable doubt charge failed to properly locate the standard above probability.

The appeal was allowed and a new trial ordered.

The appellant appealed his conviction for sexual assault, seeking to introduce fresh evidence that he was in custody on a date the complainant claimed to have seen him prior to the offence.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the motion to introduce fresh evidence and the appeal, finding that the specific date was of no particular significance in the context of the trial and the fresh evidence could not reasonably be expected to have affected the trial judge's acceptance of the identification evidence.

The appellants challenged a s. 37 order sustaining Crown objections to questions that might reveal the identity of a confidential source described in a wiretap affidavit.

The Court of Appeal held that even if the source acted as a police agent in an unrelated stolen-goods transaction, that did not convert the source into an agent for all purposes or in relation to the appellants' drug investigation.

The court further held that, even assuming the Crown's earlier characterization of the source as an agent in the wiretap materials created prejudice and amounted to an abuse of process, compelled disclosure of identity was unavailable because informer privilege must be protected if it in fact applies.

Any appropriate remedy would instead lie, if warranted, in a Garofoli challenge to the authorization and possible exclusion of intercepted evidence.

The accused was convicted of failing to remain at the scene of an accident.

A new trial was ordered on appeal.

At the second trial, the Crown cross-examined the accused on inconsistencies between his current testimony and his testimony at the first trial to impeach his credibility.

The accused was convicted again, but the Court of Appeal quashed the conviction, holding that the cross-examination violated s. 13 of the Charter.

The Supreme Court of Canada allowed the Crown's appeal, holding that using a prior inconsistent statement from a former proceeding solely to impugn the credibility of an accused does not incriminate that person and therefore does not violate s. 13.