Saman Wickramasinghe

The applicant sought certiorari to quash an order committing him to stand trial following a preliminary inquiry on firearms possession charges.

The committal was based on circumstantial evidence that a handgun found in a bedroom closet belonged to or was controlled by the applicant.

The court held that the preliminary inquiry judge relied on speculative opinion evidence from a police officer regarding clothing size in the bedroom to infer occupancy and control.

Because the remaining evidence merely placed the applicant in the apartment and did not link him to the bedroom or firearm, there was no admissible evidence supporting the essential element of possession.

The committal constituted a jurisdictional error and was quashed.

The appellant appealed a conviction for sexual assault arising from allegations that he touched the complainant’s vagina during a therapeutic massage.

He argued that the verdict was unreasonable due to the trial judge’s misapprehension of evidence and that the trial judge applied a higher level of scrutiny to the defence evidence than to the complainant’s evidence.

The appeal court held that several minor misapprehensions of evidence identified in the record were peripheral and did not affect the core credibility findings or reasoning process leading to conviction.

The court also found no basis to conclude that the trial judge applied uneven scrutiny to the parties’ evidence.

The conviction was upheld.