Court File and Parties
SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE - ONTARIO
RE: His Majesty the King, Respondent
AND:
Farhan Durrani, Applicant
BEFORE: Justice J. Stribopoulos
COUNSEL: Enoch Guimond and Hubert Gonzalez, for the Crown David Delle Fave, agent for Tyler Smith, Amicus Curiae Farhan Durrani, acting in person
HEARD: April 2, 2026
E N D O R S E M E N T
1Mr. Durrani is charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of his cousin, Hammad Shaikh, on December 30, 2022. Mr. Durrani is self-represented, and amicus has been appointed. His judge-alone trial is scheduled for the court’s sittings commencing the week of May 19, 2026.
2To date, Mr. Durrani has brought three applications in this court, each of which has been unsuccessful.
3First, he brought an application alleging breaches of his ss. 7, 8, 9, 11(d), and 12 Charter rights and seeking a stay of proceedings under s. 24(1). In essence, the application was based on Mr. Durrani’s claim that he has been the target of a widespread, years-long conspiracy, of which the investigation and prosecution in this case form part. After hearing the evidence and submissions, Justice Miller dismissed the application, concluding that Mr. Durrani’s various claims were not substantiated by the evidence: see R. v. Durrani, 2025 ONSC 441.
4Second, he brought an application to quash his committal for trial by way of certiorari on the basis that he had been denied the opportunity to have a preliminary inquiry. Justice Miller also heard and dismissed that application on jurisdictional and procedural grounds: see R. v. Durrani, 2025 ONSC 5783.
5Finally, Mr. Durrani applied for bail. That application was heard by Justice Ricchetti, who dismissed it after concluding that Mr. Durrani had failed to establish that his detention was not justified on the primary, secondary, and tertiary grounds.
6Mr. Durrani now applies for a stay of proceedings under s. 24(1) of the Charter, relying on his right to a fair trial guaranteed by s. 11(d). He filed 15 pages of handwritten submissions in support of the application and relied on the prior decisions of Justices Miller and Ricchetti, as well as some of the materials provided to him as part of Crown disclosure. Mr. Durrani supplemented his written submissions with oral submissions at the hearing. In essence, he claims that he cannot receive a fair trial and that the charge against him should therefore be stayed.
7The basis for Mr. Durrani’s application is what he characterizes as significant deficiencies in the reasons provided by Justices Miller and Ricchetti. He submits that each judge overlooked and mischaracterized the evidence he marshalled, as well as the submissions he made in support of his applications. Mr. Durrani relies on these alleged deficiencies to support his claim that there “has been a history of jurist misconduct,” that the judges who dealt with the earlier applications “have controlled the narrative by curating the record” to his detriment, and that they omitted information that would have supported the various claims he advanced in those applications. He argues that he has thereby been “prevented from adducing relevant and material evidence,” which has undermined his Charter rights to make full answer and defence and to receive a fair trial: see R. v. J.J., 2022 SCC 28, [2022] 2 S.C.R. 3.
8Against that backdrop, Mr. Durrani further submits that there “is an obvious, palpable bias toward” him that demonstrates “a conspiracy involving adjudicators and other members of the justice system.” He therefore submits that the judges of this court “cannot be trusted” to ensure that he receives a fair trial, and that s. 11(d) of the Charter has been “breached many times over,” leaving “no alternative”; in his submission, “the only remedy to redress the issue is a stay of proceedings” under s. 24(1).
9For two principal reasons, the first procedural and the second substantive, Mr. Durrani’s application is dismissed.
10In procedural terms, Mr. Durrani’s application amounts to an impermissible collateral attack on the orders made by Justices Miller and Ricchetti dismissing his earlier applications: see Garland v. Consumers’ Gas Co., 2004 SCC 25, [2004] 1 S.C.R. 629, at paras. 71-72; Wilson v. The Queen, [1983] 2 S.C.R. 594, at p. 599. That is so because, in relation to each of the decisions about which Mr. Durrani complains, a more direct procedure exists for challenging it: an appeal.
11For example, with respect to Justice Miller’s decision dismissing Mr. Durrani’s certiorari application, he could have appealed that ruling directly to the Court of Appeal: see Criminal Code, s. 784(1). Similarly, because he is charged with a s. 469 offence, Mr. Durrani could have sought review in the Court of Appeal of Justice Ricchetti’s decision dismissing his bail application by obtaining leave from the Chief Justice of that court: see Criminal Code, s. 680.
12Finally, if Mr. Durrani is ultimately convicted, it will be open to him to appeal his conviction and challenge any pre-trial Charter rulings decided against him: see Criminal Code, s. 675(1). Subject to specific statutory rights of appeal, however, interlocutory appeals are not permitted in Canadian criminal procedure: see Mills v. The Queen, [1986] 1 S.C.R. 863, at pp. 958-64; R. v. DeSousa, [1992] 2 S.C.R. 944, at p. 954; R. v. Awashish, 2018 SCC 45, [2018] 3 S.C.R. 87, at para. 10.
13It follows that, insofar as Mr. Durrani seeks to challenge rulings for which no immediate right of appeal is available, he may do so only after trial, if he is convicted. That remains so even though he alleges that the continuation of this prosecution represents an ongoing violation of his Charter rights. There are good policy reasons for this, as Justice McIntyre explained in Mills, at pp. 963-64:
It must be remembered that everyone who claims Charter relief will not necessarily get what he seeks. There will be successful claims and unsuccessful claims, and in respect of each claim the question of breach of the right and entitlement to relief will have to be dealt with. This is true of all rights, Charter and non‑Charter. If we recognize some priority arising out of an allegation of a breach of a Charter right so that it is somehow lifted from the ordinary flow of cases and given a special right of immediate interlocutory appeal, I fear that the confusion which would result would far outweigh any benefit which successful individuals would achieve. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that an interlocutory appeal will accelerate the process. Rather, experience has shown that the interlocutory motion or appeal has all too frequently been the instrument of delay. In my view, it does not follow that interlocutory appeals will hasten the process. They are far more likely to delay the disposition of cases and would themselves tend to prolong the proceedings involved in the determination of Charter infringement.
14Even if those procedural obstacles were not insurmountable, which they are, there is a second and substantive reason why the application must be dismissed.
15Mr. Durrani’s application before me is predicated on his claim that Justices Miller and Ricchetti exhibited bias against him in their rulings because they mischaracterized the evidence supporting his applications, failed to mention significant evidence, or misdescribed his submissions.
16During the hearing of this application, Mr. Durrani highlighted three pieces of evidence that he says provide powerful, and in his view incontrovertible, proof that he is the victim of a conspiracy. He says that Justices Miller and Ricchetti either overlooked these items or effectively whitewashed them in their rulings.
17I do not propose to review these items in great detail. It is sufficient to note that Mr. Durrani plainly regards them as having considerable evidentiary significance in proving the conspiracy he alleges. They are: (1) a text exchange between him and an individual whom Mr. Durrani has described, at different times, as both a former coworker and a former fellow student; (2) evidence that the deceased told his wife he found it “weird” that Mr. Durrani wished to meet with him rather than speak by phone and said, “what if he is going to just shoot me”; and (3) evidence that, in searching his home after the homicide, the police failed to seize a “Timeline” in which Mr. Durrani had set out events relevant to the alleged conspiracy, even though it was sitting in plain view on his desk and appeared in photographs taken by the police when they executed the search warrant. One example suffices to illustrate the difficulty with Mr. Durrani’s position.
18There is the text exchange between Mr. Durrani and the former co-worker (fellow student). On Mr. Durrani’s theory of the case, the conspiracy against him began while he was a student at the School of Architecture at Dalhousie University. He claims that the text exchange provides powerful evidence of the conspiracy. The exchange reads as follows:
KB: Sorry it’s all happening. don’t know what to tell you. i’m not in the Dal gossip loop.
Mr. Durrani: I just don’t know what to do. If I walk away, my reputation is ruined. If I stand and fight to clear my name, I risk destroying the school.
KB: if you fight it, everyone will know who you are and not remember whether you won or not.
KB: i’v gotta run.
19Mr. Durrani characterizes what his former coworker, or fellow student, wrote in this exchange as a “threat.” In his submission, it was a warning to him and proves that the man was implicated in the conspiracy and was acting at the behest of the School of Architecture to prevent others from learning about it.
20Respectfully, I cannot agree with Mr. Durrani’s characterization of the exchange or of its potential evidentiary significance. It furnishes neither direct nor circumstantial evidence of a threat or of a conspiracy. To be sure, Mr. Durrani appears honestly to believe otherwise. But that belief does not make it so.
21The other two items of evidence, concerning the discussion between the deceased and his wife before the shooting and the “Timeline” that the police failed to seize during the search of Mr. Durrani’s residence, are similar. At most, they are innocuous pieces of evidence. Mr. Durrani, however, regards them as significant and powerful proof of the conspiracy he alleges.
22It is against that backdrop that I assess Mr. Durrani’s claims on this application. He submits that the failure of Justices Miller and Ricchetti either to mention these items of evidence or to recognize what he says is their obvious significance leads to only one possible inference: they are complicit in the conspiracy against him. Further, because members of the judiciary are, on his theory, implicated in that conspiracy, no judge can be trusted to preside impartially over his forthcoming trial.
23Respectfully, those claims are without merit. First, the evidence on which Mr. Durrani relies simply does not bear the significance he ascribes to it.
24Second, even if Justices Miller or Ricchetti failed to mention some of the evidence that Mr. Durrani regards as significant, or disagreed with his characterization of its significance, that would fall far short of proving bias on their part. Judges benefit from a strong presumption of integrity and impartiality, grounded in the judicial oath, which may be displaced only by cogent evidence: see R. v. Teskey, 2007 SCC 25, [2007] 2 S.C.R. 267, at paras. 20-21, 29-34; Cojocaru v. British Columbia Women’s Hospital and Health Centre, 2013 SCC 30, [2013] 2 S.C.R. 357, at paras. 15-20; Yukon Francophone School Board, Education Area #23 v. Yukon (Attorney General), 2015 SCC 25, [2015] 2 S.C.R. 282, at paras. 25-26. Mr. Durrani has marshalled no evidence, let alone cogent evidence, that either Justice Miller or Justice Ricchetti was biased against him, much less complicit in the conspiracy he alleges.
25Third, the same is true of Mr. Durrani’s claim that Justices Miller and Ricchetti misdescribed his submissions. Even assuming they did, that would hardly provide a sufficient basis for a finding of bias. Judges are human, and they sometimes make mistakes. A failure to fairly and accurately characterize a party’s submissions, if that occurred, is insufficient on its own to substantiate a claim of bias and thereby rebut the presumption of judicial integrity.
26Finally, Mr. Durrani’s allegation that the judges of this court are implicated in a conspiracy against him, and that no judge of this court could impartially preside over his forthcoming trial, is unsupported by any evidence.
27For all of these reasons, Mr. Durrani’s application is dismissed.
Signed: “J. Stribopoulos J.”
DATE: April 10, 2026
CITATION: R. v. Durrani, 2026 ONSC 2128
COURT FILE NO.: CRIMJ(P) 23/388
DATE: 20260410
SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE - ONTARIO
RE: His Majesty the King
AND
Farhan Durrani
ENDORSEMENT
Stribopoulos J.
DATE: April 10, 2026