Scott K. Fenton

The accused was convicted of narcotics offences based on the viva voce evidence of a co-accused who had been arrested during an illegal search of a marijuana-growing operation.

The co-accused had pleaded guilty and volunteered to testify.

The Court of Appeal excluded the testimony under s. 24(2) of the Charter.

The Supreme Court of Canada allowed the Crown's appeal and restored the convictions, holding that the connection between the illegal search and the witness's decision to testify was too remote.

The Court distinguished between the discovery of inanimate objects and live witness testimony, noting that the witness's voluntary decision to cooperate severed the temporal and causal links to the Charter breach.

Police investigating cocaine trafficking entered and secured the accused's home without a warrant while awaiting issuance of a search warrant, in order to prevent destruction or removal of evidence after public arrests nearby.

The majority held the warrantless entry breached s. 8 of the Charter, but concluded under s. 24(2) that the cocaine and marked money should not be excluded because the evidence was real evidence, trial fairness was unaffected, exigent circumstances mitigated the seriousness of the breach, and the evidence was vital to prosecution of serious drug offences.

A concurring judge would have found no s. 8 breach because exigent circumstances justified entry, while the dissent would have excluded the evidence as the product of a serious, police-created Charter breach.

Appeal dismissed.

The appellant appealed a decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal which had allowed the Crown's appeal from a stay of proceedings and ordered a new trial.

The issue concerned whether the use of a police informant, who was to be paid in full only in the event of a successful investigation, constituted an abuse of process.

The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the appeal as of right, adopting the reasons of the Court of Appeal that the informant's evidence was not inadmissible.

Criminal appeals arising from convictions for conspiracy to traffic in controlled substances where a substantial part of the Crown's case rested on intercepted private communications.

The central issue was whether the trial judge over-edited affidavits supporting wiretap authorizations, thereby preventing an effective Wilson review and depriving the appellants of their Charter right to make full answer and defence.

The majority held that full disclosure is the governing premise, subject only to narrow public-interest exceptions, and that the deletions improperly withheld material that could have been used to challenge the validity of the authorizations.

The Court allowed the appeals, quashed the convictions, and ordered a new trial.