COURT FILE NO.: 12-9675
SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE - ONTARIO
RE: Regina v. Larry Watts
BEFORE: Bale J.
COUNSEL: Erin Carley, for the Crown
Larry Watts, in person
HEARD: August 10, 2015
ENDORSEMENT
Introduction
1These are my reasons for decision on Crown counsel’s pre-trial motion requesting an order granting the Crown leave to file summary evidence (as a form of demonstrative evidence). The accused was subsequently convicted following a six-week jury trial.
2The accused was charged with one count of fraud. The charge arose from the preparation by the accused of one or more income tax returns for 241 clients. The Crown alleged that the returns contained false statements relating to business losses supposedly incurred in the operation of non-existent businesses.
3As one might expect in a case of this nature, the documentary evidence was voluminous. It consisted of paper and electronic files seized from the accused’s home and business premises, copies of tax returns filed with CRA, bank records, electronic accounting records, and correspondence. The Crown’s evidence would be filed electronically.
4In order to assist the jury in understanding the evidence, Crown counsel requested leave to file spreadsheets summarizing the documentary evidence, with electronic links to the supporting documents. I granted the leave requested, with reasons to follow. The following are those reasons.
Background
5The Crown would be calling twenty of the accused’s taxpayer clients as witnesses at trial. It was anticipated that those witnesses would testify that the accused prepared their tax returns, that they didn’t, in fact, suffer business losses, and that they had no idea where the accused got the numbers used in their returns. The Crown’s position was that a comparison of the documents relating to the 20 taxpayer client witnesses, when compared with the documents relating to the balance of the 241 taxpayers for whom the accused prepared returns, would establish a pattern of conduct from which the jury could infer that the returns for the balance of the 241 had been prepared by the accused, and were similarly false.
6In order to assist the jury in understanding the pattern of conduct, a spreadsheet was prepared which categorized the documents using the spreadsheet columns, and related them to each taxpayer client using the spreadsheet rows. The spreadsheet contained electronic links which would allow the jury to view the supporting documents, in each category, for each client. Using the spreadsheet, the jury would be better able to understand the pattern of conduct alleged, and determine whether the accused had prepared the tax returns for the clients not called as witnesses, and whether the impugned statements in those returns were similarly false.
7The Crown alleged that the total amount of the fraud was in excess of $10,000,000. In order to illustrate the amount, a spreadsheet was prepared to show the taxes that would have been evaded had each of the returns, for each of the clients, been assessed as filed, the amounts actually refunded, and the fees paid by the clients (twenty per cent of the amounts refunded).
8The electronic evidence which the Crown intended to introduce at trial was filed on the motion, and the lead investigator from CRA gave evidence as to the source of the documents, and the methodology used in preparing the spreadsheets. Based upon this evidence, I was satisfied that the spreadsheets accurately portrayed the electronic evidence upon which they were based.
Analysis
9As noted by Boswell J. in R. v. Pan, 2014 ONSC 6055, at para. 120, juries today are challenged by increasingly complex, voluminous and dense evidentiary records, and must be provided with the assistance they need, and deserve, to meet the challenge.
10In my view, demonstrative evidence of the type which the Crown proposed to introduce in this case was not only permissible, but necessary. It would otherwise be impossible for the jury to review, and compare, the thousands of documents summarized in the “pattern of conduct” spreadsheet, or to recall the relevant calculations, if given orally, without the use of the “taxes evaded” spreadsheet.
11The accused argued that introduction of the spreadsheets would be prejudicial; however, the prejudice alleged was really nothing more than that the spreadsheets would assist the Crown in impressing the jury with the enormity of the alleged fraud. As I found that the spreadsheets accurately portrayed the evidence upon which they were based, I rejected the argument.
Conclusion
12For these reasons, the Crown was permitted to introduce the summary evidence at trial.
“Bale J.”
Released: November 26, 2015