Supreme Court of Canada

The Crown appealed a Court of Appeal decision restoring stay applications for abuse of process that a trial judge had summarily dismissed following a Vukelich hearing.

The accused had alleged systemic police misconduct and inhumane conditions of confinement prejudicing their right to a fair trial.

The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the Crown's appeal and held that the correct threshold for summary dismissal of applications in the criminal law context is whether the application is manifestly frivolous — a rigorous standard requiring that the frivolous nature of the application be obvious on the face of the record.

The trial judge erred by failing to assume the truth of the alleged facts and inferences and by applying an insufficiently rigorous threshold that slid towards the merits of the underlying applications.

The appellant challenged provisions of Quebec's Cannabis Regulation Act that completely prohibit the possession and cultivation of cannabis plants in a dwelling-house, arguing they fell under federal criminal law power or were inoperative due to federal paramountcy.

The Supreme Court held that the impugned provisions are a valid exercise of provincial jurisdiction under ss. 92(13) and (16) of the Constitution Act, 1867, finding their pith and substance is to ensure the effectiveness of the state monopoly on cannabis sales to protect public health and security.

The Court further held that the provisions do not frustrate the purpose of the federal Cannabis Act, because Parliament's exemption of up to four home-grown plants does not confer positive rights to cultivate, and the provincial objectives are compatible with the federal scheme's goals of combating illicit cannabis activity.

The Crown appealed an acquittal entered by the Quebec Court of Appeal arising from the respondent's refusal to provide a roadside breath sample under s. 254(2)(b) of the Criminal Code when the demanding officer did not have an approved screening device (ASD) in his possession.

The Supreme Court of Canada held that the word 'forthwith' in s. 254(2)(b) must be interpreted in accordance with its ordinary meaning — immediately or without delay — and that the absence of an ASD at the scene at the time a demand is made is not an unusual circumstance justifying a flexible interpretation of that requirement.

A demand made when no ASD is present is therefore invalid, and a driver cannot be criminally liable for refusing to comply with a demand that it was physically impossible to comply with.

The Crown bears the burden of establishing unusual circumstances to justify any departure from the immediacy requirement.

The appeal was dismissed and the acquittal upheld.

The Crown appealed an acquittal for impaired driving and driving with excessive blood alcohol after police conducted a random sobriety stop on private property.

The officers had formed the intention to stop the respondent while he was on the highway under s. 48(1) of the Highway Traffic Act, but only effected the stop after he had pulled onto a private driveway.

The Supreme Court held that s. 48(1) did not authorize random sobriety stops on private property, as the respondent was no longer a 'driver' within the HTA's definition when stopped, and the police breached his s. 9 Charter rights.

However, applying the Grant framework, the Court declined to exclude the evidence under s. 24(2), finding that the legal uncertainty at the time rendered the breach not egregious, and the reliable and crucial nature of the evidence combined with the serious public interest in combatting impaired driving outweighed the first two lines of inquiry.

The accused voluntarily made admissions during a treatment process concerning acts of a sexual nature committed against a child.

Those admissions were sent to the director of youth protection and then to police with the accused's consent.

The accused was charged with sexual assault and filed a motion to exclude the admissions, which the trial judge dismissed.

The Court of Appeal entered an acquittal on the basis that the admissions were inadmissible.

The Supreme Court, in a majority decision, allowed the Crown's appeal on the sole issue of the accused's consent to disclosure of his admissions, restoring the conviction.

The dissenting judge would have dismissed the appeal substantially for the reasons of the Court of Appeal majority.

The Crown appealed the Court of Appeal for British Columbia's decision setting aside voyeurism convictions and ordering a new trial.

The accused, a hockey coach, had surreptitiously photographed two adolescent boys aged 12 to 14 in their underwear in hockey arena dressing rooms.

The central issue was whether s. 162(1)(a) of the Criminal Code contains an implicit temporal component requiring the Crown to prove that nudity was reasonably expected at the specific time the photos were taken.

The Supreme Court held, through a textual, contextual, and purposive analysis, that s. 162(1)(a) has no implicit temporal component; dressing rooms qualify as protected 'safe places' regardless of whether nudity is expected at the precise moment of observation or recording.

The Court restored the convictions, and declined to address the respondent's constitutional overbreadth argument raised for the first time on appeal.

The appellant was convicted of offences arising from a home invasion robbery on the basis of circumstantial evidence of identity, namely DNA found on a cigarette butt in a stolen vehicle and a victim's testimony that he may have heard the appellant's last name spoken during the robbery.

The majority of the Supreme Court of Canada found the verdicts unreasonable, holding that the DNA evidence alone did not establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and that the trial judge misapprehended the victim's testimony and failed to address serious concerns about his reliability.

The majority set aside the convictions and substituted verdicts of acquittal.

Côté and O'Bonsawin JJ. dissented, finding the combined effect of the DNA and identification evidence reasonably supported the inference of guilt.

A member of the Canadian Armed Forces posted abroad was convicted of voyeurism, possession of a device for surreptitious interception of private communications, sexual assault, and disgraceful conduct, following a search of his residence and electronic devices by Canadian military investigators and local police operating under a Virginia warrant.

The appellant challenged the search as violating s. 8 of the Charter, arguing the search was unauthorized and unreasonably expanded to cover unanticipated offences.

The majority held that the search was authorized by law under the Virginia warrant, which expressly covered electronic devices; that the warrant met the Vu standard for specific prior authorization of digital searches; and that evidence of sexual assault discovered inadvertently during triage of electronic devices was admissible under the plain view doctrine.

The Court declined to reconsider the extraterritorial application of the Charter as established in R. v. Hape.

The appeal was dismissed and convictions affirmed.

The appellant pleaded guilty to intentionally discharging a firearm into or at a place knowing or being reckless as to whether another person was present, contrary to s. 244.2(1)(a) of the Criminal Code, and challenged the constitutionality of the mandatory minimum sentence of four years' imprisonment under s. 244.2(3)(b) on the basis of a reasonable hypothetical involving a young person firing an air-powered pistol or rifle at a residence incapable of perforating its walls.

The majority held that the mandatory minimum is grossly disproportionate under s. 12 of the Charter because the offence captures a wide spectrum of conduct ranging from acts that present little danger to the public to those that pose a grave risk, and the fit sentence for the hypothetical youthful offender would be a suspended sentence of up to 12 months' probation — rendering a four-year custodial term totally out of sync with sentencing norms and incompatible with human dignity.

The declaration of invalidity was applied retroactively and the three-and-a-half-year sentence imposed by the sentencing judge was reinstated.

Côté J. dissented, finding that the hypothetical was not a reasonably foreseeable application of the offence and that the mandatory minimum did not meet the high threshold for cruel and unusual punishment.

The Crown appealed declarations of unconstitutionality of mandatory minimum sentences for robbery with a restricted or prohibited firearm (five years under s. 344(1)(a)(i)) and robbery with an ordinary firearm (four years under the former s. 344(1)(a.1)) of the Criminal Code.

The majority held that neither mandatory minimum constituted cruel and unusual punishment under s. 12 of the Charter, finding the offences narrowly defined, high in gravity and moral culpability, and the minimums not grossly disproportionate even in reasonably foreseeable cases.

The Court affirmed the two-stage framework from the companion case R. v. Hills, 2023 SCC 2, and addressed the role of Indigeneity in the s. 12 analysis.

Karakatsanis and Jamal JJ. dissented, concluding both provisions were unconstitutional and should be struck down.

The Crown appealed a Court of Appeal decision that set aside the accused's conviction for sexual offences against a young child and entered an acquittal.

The trial judge had admitted the child's unsworn videotaped police statement under the principled exception to the hearsay rule after a psychologist concluded the child could not testify without undue trauma.

The Court of Appeal majority found the trial judge erred in the threshold reliability analysis by failing to address the role of cross-examination and making a positive finding of no motive to fabricate.

The Supreme Court of Canada allowed the Crown's appeal, substantially adopting the reasons of the Court of Appeal dissent, and restored the conviction.

Two appellants were unlawfully detained by police under non-existent statutory authority after reporting their roommate's death, then later arrested for murder by a homicide detective who directed their continued questioning.

At issue were: the voluntariness of one appellant's confession, whether the police had reasonable and probable grounds for the murder arrests, and whether the confessions should be excluded under s. 24(2) of the Charter.

The majority dismissed the appeals, holding that one confession was voluntary, the arrests were lawful, and that although one confession was obtained in a manner connected to Charter breaches, admission would not bring the administration of justice into disrepute.

The dissent would have allowed the appeals, finding the arrests were not supported by reasonable grounds and rejecting the 'fresh start' doctrine as a basis to sever the connection between Charter breaches and the evidence obtained.

The appellant was convicted of possession of a loaded restricted firearm and failure to comply with a condition of a recognizance after a firearm was found in his bag in the back seat of a car also occupied by two other individuals.

The trial judge rejected the appellant's testimony that he did not know the firearm was in his bag as not credible and concluded that the only reasonable inference from the circumstantial evidence was that the firearm had been concealed in the bag with the appellant's knowledge.

The appellant appealed to the Court of Appeal on the ground that the verdict was unreasonable; the majority dismissed that appeal.

The Supreme Court unanimously dismissed the further appeal, finding no error in the trial judge's application of the W.(D.) framework, no error in the Court of Appeal's application of Villaroman, and no error in the trial judge's use of the appellant's calm demeanour at arrest as one element of the circumstantial evidence of knowledge.

The accused was convicted of several offences resulting from altercations with two complainants.

The accused appealed on the basis that the trial judge erred in admitting an out-of-court statement made by a complainant who died of unrelated causes before trial, for the truth of its contents.

The majority of the Court of Appeal held that the trial judge applied an incorrect principle of law in assessing threshold reliability and ordered a new trial.

The Supreme Court of Canada, allowing the Crown's appeal, found that the trial judge properly applied the principled approach to hearsay evidence and did not relax the minimum threshold of reliability, agreeing with the dissent in the Court of Appeal.

The convictions were restored.

The appellant (mother) wrongfully retained two young children in Ontario after travelling from Dubai, UAE, where the children habitually resided.

The respondent father applied under s. 40 of the Children's Law Reform Act for a return order.

The trial judge declined jurisdiction under s. 23 of the CLRA, finding the serious harm threshold was not met, and ordered the children's return to Dubai.

The Supreme Court of Canada, 5-4, dismissed the appeal, holding that the trial judge committed no palpable and overriding error in concluding the children would not suffer serious harm, that separation from a primary caregiver does not automatically satisfy the serious harm threshold, and that the father's undertakings regarding the mother's residency should be included explicitly in the return order.

The dissent would have allowed the appeal on the basis that the trial judge materially misapprehended the evidence on both the likelihood and severity of harm.

The appellant was acquitted at trial of sexual interference, invitation to sexual touching, and sexual assault against his granddaughter, who was between 7 and 10 years old at the time of the alleged offences.

The Crown appealed on the basis that the trial judge engaged in impermissible stereotypical reasoning in assessing the complainant's credibility, specifically by inferring that because the complainant had a 'strong and normal' relationship with the accused, the offences could not have occurred.

The Supreme Court of Canada agreed with the majority of the Court of Appeal that this inference was rooted in stereotypical reasoning rather than the totality of the evidence, and constituted an error of law that had a material effect on the verdict.

The appeal was dismissed and a new trial ordered.

The appellant was convicted of second degree murder by a jury.

On appeal, he argued that the trial judge erred by failing to provide a specific Hibbert-type caution to the jury regarding the frailties of in-court identification evidence by two witnesses.

The majority of the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal held that the jury instructions adequately equipped the jury to evaluate the eyewitness evidence and upheld the conviction.

The dissenting judge found that the circumstances required a specific caution about the inherent frailties of in-court identification.

The Supreme Court of Canada agreed with the dissenting judge, allowed the appeal, set aside the conviction, and ordered a new trial.