Shawn Porter

The young person appealed his conviction and sentence.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the conviction appeal, finding the trial judge was not obliged to articulate a Vetrovec warning and adequately cautioned himself regarding a witness's evidence.

However, the Crown conceded the sentence was illegal.

The Court granted leave to appeal the sentence, reducing the probation period from two years to one year and varying the assault sentence to one year concurrent to correct the illegality.

The appellant appealed his conviction and sentence.

On the conviction appeal, he argued the trial judge erred in drawing an inference of consciousness of guilt from his suicide attempt, in assessing the complainant's cross-examination, and in using prior consistent statements.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the conviction appeal, finding no errors by the trial judge and rejecting the proposed fresh evidence under the Palmer test.

However, the Court allowed the sentence appeal, finding the trial judge focused almost exclusively on the offence itself.

In light of fresh evidence regarding the appellant's medical condition, the sentence was varied to three years.

The appellant appealed his convictions for assault, uttering a death threat, attempting to choke, and extortion.

The trial judge's reasons were very brief and simply adopted the Crown's submissions in their entirety.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal and ordered a new trial, finding that the trial judge misapprehended evidence, failed to provide sufficient reasons for rejecting the appellant's evidence in a case turning on credibility, and improperly treated the case as a credibility contest.

The appellant appealed his convictions for impaired driving, dangerous driving, and assault with intent to resist arrest.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal regarding the driving offences, finding no error by the summary conviction appeal judge.

However, the Court allowed the appeal on the assault charge, holding that the appellant's act of pulling his arm away to disengage from police officers did not constitute an assault in law, though it likely amounted to an offence under s. 129 of the Criminal Code.

The conviction for assault resisting arrest was set aside.

The appellant appealed his convictions for kidnapping, extortion, assault, and uttering a death threat.

The charges arose from an incident where the appellant and co-accused kidnapped the victim, forced him into a car, and assaulted him.

The appellant argued the trial judge erred in admitting a 911 call under the principled exception to the hearsay rule, in his jury instructions regarding conceded facts and identity, and in allowing prior consistent statements to enhance a witness's credibility.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding no errors in the trial judge's rulings or jury instructions, and noting the overwhelming strength of the Crown's case.

The accused appealed his assault conviction to the summary conviction appeal court, which dismissed the appeal with brief, conclusory reasons.

The accused appealed to the Court of Appeal, arguing the appeal judge's reasons were inadequate.

The Court of Appeal held that the failure to give adequate reasons constituted an error of law that deprived the accused of meaningful appellate review.

Upon reviewing the trial record, the Court found the trial judge misapprehended evidence and subjected the accused's testimony to stricter scrutiny than the complainant's.

The appeal was allowed and a new trial ordered.

The appellant appealed his convictions for break and enter, breach of probation, and breach of recognizance.

He argued the verdict was unreasonable because his DNA on a Coke bottle found at the scene did not prove he was present, and that the trial judge improperly used his failure to testify to convict him.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding the trial judge's inferences from the DNA evidence were logical and not speculative, and that the trial judge only noted the appellant's silence after already concluding the Crown had proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

The appellant appealed his robbery conviction, which was based solely on the eyewitness identification of the complainant, a taxi driver.

The Court of Appeal found the identification evidence to be unreliable due to discrepancies in the complainant's descriptions, the brief and stressful nature of the encounter, and flaws in the photo line-up.

The appeal was allowed, the conviction was set aside, and an acquittal was entered.

The appellant was convicted of first degree murder after the deceased was found strangled in his apartment building.

At trial, the Crown introduced similar fact evidence of a prior sexual assault committed by the appellant against a prostitute four years earlier to prove identity.

The appellant appealed the conviction, arguing the similar fact evidence was improperly admitted and challenging the jury instructions on reasonable doubt and DNA evidence.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal and ordered a new trial, finding that the similar fact evidence lacked the high degree of similarity required to prove identity and was highly prejudicial.

The appellant was convicted of driving 'over 80' after the trial judge refused to hear his section 7 Charter application due to an inadequate Notice of Application under Rule 30.

The summary conviction appeal court dismissed the appeal.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, finding that the trial judge erred in principle by rigidly applying the procedural rule to foreclose the Charter argument without considering whether the Crown suffered any actual prejudice.

Because the Charter argument was factually straightforward and legally routine, the Crown was not prejudiced, and a new trial was ordered.

The appellant appealed his convictions for sexual assault with a weapon, forcible confinement, and uttering a death threat.

The primary issue on appeal was whether the police's retention of the appellant's fingerprints, which were taken during a previous arrest for charges that were subsequently withdrawn, violated his s. 8 Charter rights against unreasonable search and seizure.

The Court of Appeal held that the retention of fingerprints after charges are withdrawn does not automatically violate s. 8.

The police policy of destroying fingerprints upon request strikes a reasonable balance between the individual's privacy interests and the state's law enforcement objectives.

Since the appellant never requested the destruction of his fingerprints, their retention and subsequent use to identify him in the sexual assault investigation were reasonable and lawful.

The appeal was dismissed.

The appellant appealed his convictions for aggravated assault and assault with a weapon, as well as his four-year sentence.

The offences arose from an altercation at a party where the complainant was attacked with broken beer bottles.

The appellant argued that the trial judge erred in her jury instructions regarding reasonable doubt, the absence of a witness, the response to a jury question, and the use of the complainant's criminal record.

The Court of Appeal found no errors in the jury instructions, noting that the charge as a whole properly conveyed the burden of proof.

The court also upheld the sentence, finding that the disparity between the appellant's sentence and his co-accused's conditional sentence was justified by their differing levels of involvement and personal circumstances.

The appeal against conviction and sentence was dismissed.

The applicant hospital administrators moved under s. 672.76 of the Criminal Code to suspend a disposition of the Ontario Review Board ordering the transfer of the respondent accused from a maximum to a medium secure hospital facility, pending their appeal.

The court dismissed the motion, noting that the accused was fourth on the waiting list for the medium secure facility and it was highly unlikely he would be transferred before the appeal was heard in 13 days, making the suspension order unnecessary.

The appellant appealed convictions for sexual offences involving two stepdaughters and also appealed a nine-year sentence.

The court held that although the jury charge pre-dated the governing reasonable doubt instruction case and did not expressly address the third branch of the credibility framework, the charge as a whole adequately conveyed the presumption of innocence, the burden of proof, and the requirement that the verdict be based on the evidence.

The court rejected challenges to the answer to a jury question, the gross indecency charge, and the use of similar fact evidence, noting the limiting instruction and the strength of the Crown's case.

The sentence was held to be fit given the repeated abuse of trust and serious abuse of children in the appellant's care.

Both appeals were dismissed.

The appellant appealed convictions arising from an incident involving two taxi drivers, arguing identity and challenging the legal basis for certain convictions.

The court rejected the identity argument and upheld the robbery conviction, finding the injury to the first driver was sufficient to constitute bodily harm and that robbery under s. 343(c) did not require an actual theft.

Applying the Kienapple rule, the court stayed the assault causing bodily harm conviction as an included offence of robbery arising from the same delict.

The court also quashed the conviction for personating a police officer because that summary conviction offence had been improperly joined and tried in superior court following a preliminary inquiry.

The remaining conviction appeals were dismissed.

The appellant appealed both conviction for attempted murder and an eight-year penitentiary sentence arising from a stabbing of his wife.

The Court of Appeal rejected arguments that the trial judge ignored a reasonable doubt, reversed the burden of proof, improperly treated psychiatric evidence concerning specific intent, or wrongly relied on post-offence statements.

On sentence, the court held that protection of the spouse was the dominant consideration and that the appellant’s mental illness did not necessarily reduce the otherwise fit sentence where the illness created future risk.

Fresh evidence concerning day parole and psychiatric conditions of release did not justify appellate intervention.

The appellant appealed his murder conviction and sentence, relying on fresh recantation evidence from a key civilian witness and an inmate informant, as well as new DNA testing undermining aspects of the Crown's theory.

The court rejected the civilian witness recantation as incredible, but admitted the inmate recantation and the DNA evidence under the Palmer framework.

Although the fresh evidence significantly weakened the Crown case and impaired important inculpatory evidence, the court held it was not so conclusive as to justify an acquittal and the verdict was not shown to be unreasonable under the governing standard.

The conviction was set aside and a new trial ordered on second degree murder.

Leave to appeal the counselling sentence was granted and that sentence was reduced to time served.