Thomas Hynes

The appellant Crown appealed from a decision of the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal which quashed the respondent's convictions for firearms offences and possession of identity documents, holding that his arrest for simple possession of a controlled substance was unlawful because s. 4.1(2) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act — the Good Samaritan Drug Overdose Act exemption — precluded charge and conviction and, by necessary implication, arrest for that offence.

The majority held that Parliament's purpose in enacting s. 4.1(2) was to save lives by removing disincentives to calling emergency services at the scene of a drug overdose, and that immunity from arrest is necessarily implied by the immunity from charge and conviction, since arrest and the searches incident to it would otherwise substantially undermine that legislative purpose.

The majority further held that the s. 4.1(2) immunity does not affect other existing police powers at the scene of an overdose, and that the evidence discovered through a search incident to the unlawful arrest must be excluded under s. 24(2) of the Charter.

The dissent concluded that the text, context, and purpose of s. 4.1(2) limit the exemption to charge and conviction only, and that the police did not infringe ss. 8 or 9 of the Charter.

The appellant was convicted of robbery and having his face masked with intent to commit an indictable offence, based primarily on the recognition evidence of an unsavoury Vetrovec witness.

The appellant argued the trial judge failed to apply the requisite scrutiny to the unsavoury witness's evidence.

The majority held that the trial judge recognized the Vetrovec dangers, applied the requisite scrutiny, and was entitled to accept the recognition evidence without corroboration upon finding it credible and reliable.

The dissent would have allowed the appeal on the basis that the conviction arose from a failure to apply sufficient scrutiny, particularly given that the alleged confession was recounted only after the witness had already identified the accused from surveillance footage.

The appellant was convicted of aggravated assault at trial and appealed on three grounds: erroneous admission of spontaneous utterance evidence, improper assessment of alibi evidence, and improper assessment of identification evidence.

The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal by majority, with the dissenting judge finding the trial judge failed to conduct the required analysis of identification evidence.

The Supreme Court of Canada, by majority (Moldaver, Côté, and Brown JJ.), dismissed the appeal substantially for the reasons of the majority of the Court of Appeal.

Karakatsanis and Martin JJ. dissented and would have allowed the appeal for the reasons of the Court of Appeal dissent.

The appellant was charged with possession of methamphetamine and cocaine for the purpose of trafficking.

The trial judge acquitted the accused on the trafficking charges but convicted him of the lesser included offence of simple possession.

The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal found that the trial judge had applied the wrong legal test with respect to possession for the purpose of trafficking and entered convictions on the trafficking charges.

The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the appeal substantially for the reasons of the Court of Appeal, upholding the trafficking convictions.

The Court allowed a criminal appeal from a Crown appeal against acquittals on sexual interference and sexual assault charges involving the mistake-of-age defence under s. 150.1(4) of the Criminal Code.

It held the trial judge made no legal error in assessing whether the accused took all reasonable steps to ascertain age, and that the appellate majority improperly recast disagreements with factual inferences as legal errors.

The Court clarified that evidence arising after the sexual activity may still be relevant where used to assess credibility or the reasonableness of pre-contact age perception, while post-contact steps themselves remain irrelevant to the statutory requirement.

It further confirmed that Crown appeals from acquittal require legal error and materiality meeting a reasonable degree of certainty.