R. Craig Bottomley

The appellant was convicted of conspiring to import narcotics in association with a criminal organization.

On appeal, he argued the trial judge erred in his jury instructions regarding the co-conspirator's exception to the hearsay rule (the Carter analysis) and that the conspiracy conviction was inconsistent with his acquittal on a related trafficking charge.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding the jury instructions were functional and not confusing, and that the disparate verdicts were intelligible given the distinct evidence and theories for each charge.

The accused, Tanade Mohamed, shot and killed two men in a nightclub parking lot following a minor altercation.

He claimed self-defence and provocation for the first victim, and accident for the second.

The co-accused, Abdirisaq Ali, drove the getaway vehicle and was charged as a party to the offences.

The court rejected Mohamed's claims of self-defence and provocation, finding him guilty of second-degree murder for the first victim.

However, the court found a reasonable doubt regarding his intent to kill the second victim, resulting in a manslaughter conviction.

The co-accused was acquitted of all charges, as the court found a reasonable doubt regarding his prior knowledge of the shooter's intentions.

The Crown applied for certiorari and mandamus to quash a preliminary inquiry judge's decision committing the accused to stand trial for second-degree murder rather than first-degree murder.

The Crown argued that the act of pointing a gun at the victim's head during an attempted robbery constituted unlawful confinement, thereby elevating the offence to first-degree murder.

The reviewing court agreed, finding that the preliminary inquiry judge committed jurisdictional error by misunderstanding the elements of unlawful confinement and failing to consider the inference most favourable to the Crown.

The application was granted, the discharge was quashed, and the matter was remitted with a direction to commit the accused for first-degree murder.

The two offenders were convicted of firearms offences after a loaded restricted firearm with an extended magazine was found in the vehicle they were occupying, shortly after an exchange of gunfire with another vehicle.

The Crown sought 6 years for the passenger and 2 years less a day for the driver, while the defence sought 30 months and 12 months respectively.

The court sentenced the passenger to 40 months and the driver to 18 months, finding their moral blameworthiness differed significantly.

The court granted credit for pre-sentence custody and house arrest but declined to grant additional credit for the Covid-19 pandemic due to a lack of specific evidence regarding its impact on the offenders' incarceration.

In a civil forfeiture proceeding, the interested party brought a motion to exclude seized currency from evidence, arguing that the search warrants for his residence and vehicle violated his section 8 Charter rights.

The court reviewed the Information to Obtain (ITO) and found that the police had established a fair probability that evidence of a crime would be found, based on the party's prior drug trafficking convictions, surveillance of hand-to-hand transactions, and the practice of separating drugs from cash.

The motion to exclude the evidence was dismissed, and costs were awarded to the Attorney General.

The three accused were charged with firearms offences after police located a loaded restricted firearm in a vehicle they occupied.

The police were investigating reports of gunshots and detained the vehicle.

The court dismissed the Crown's application to admit a police officer's preliminary inquiry evidence due to insufficient proof of his medical inability to testify.

The court found the investigative detention and pat-down searches lawful, but held that the subsequent search of the vehicle violated section 8 of the Charter because the searching officer did not testify to his subjective grounds.

However, the court declined to exclude the firearm under section 24(2).

Ultimately, the passenger who hid the firearm was convicted of possession offences, the driver was convicted of occupying a vehicle with a firearm, and the other passenger was acquitted of all charges.

The accused struck a person riding a push scooter with his motor vehicle, causing bodily harm.

He was charged with impaired driving causing bodily harm and driving 'over 80' causing bodily harm.

The accused brought Charter applications alleging breaches of his rights under ss. 8, 10(a), and 10(b) due to alleged delays in taking breath samples and a failure to advise him of the potential for more serious charges.

The court dismissed the Charter applications, finding no breaches and concluding that the evidence would not be excluded under s. 24(2) regardless.

The court found the accused guilty on both counts, as the Crown proved impairment, blood alcohol concentration over 80, and causation beyond a reasonable doubt.

The accused was charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault, and weapons offences following an unprovoked stabbing on a TTC subway train.

The identity of the assailant was established through circumstantial evidence, including videotape footage, clothing descriptions, and recognition by police officers who had investigated the accused earlier that day.

The court found the accused guilty of aggravated assault and the weapons offences, but acquitted him of attempted murder, finding the Crown failed to prove a specific intent to kill.

The Crown applied for the forfeiture of personal property bearing the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club (HAMC) insignia seized from the residences of individual members and the Toronto clubhouse, arguing it was offence-related property under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

The individual respondents had been convicted of various drug trafficking offences.

The court dismissed the application, finding that while membership in the HAMC facilitated the drug transactions by providing a trustworthy network, the physical items bearing the insignia were not used to commit the offences, nor was it proven beyond a reasonable doubt that they were intended to be used for such purposes.