T. Kim

The sentencing court addressed guilty pleas to possessing child pornography, making child pornography available, and three voyeurism counts arising from prolonged covert recordings in private domestic, workplace, and public settings.

Applying Criminal Code sentencing principles, the court gave primary weight to denunciation and deterrence, citing the scale of offending, serious and lasting victim harm, and significant aggravating features including sexualized degrading conduct and exploitation of highly private spaces.

The court also considered mitigation, including the guilty plea, remorse, expert evidence of rehabilitative potential and managed risk, lack of prior record, and harsh pre-trial custody conditions including extensive lockdowns, triple-bunking, and an in-custody assault.

A global sentence of 5.5 years less 733 days of credit was imposed, with ancillary DNA, SOIRA, s. 161, forfeiture, and s. 743.21 non-communication orders.

The applicant, one of three co-accused charged with murder, brought a pre-trial application to exclude a video recovered from his cellphone.

The video depicted the applicant holding a firearm with a caption containing rap lyrics referencing a shot to the head, which mirrored the victim's cause of death.

The applicant argued the video was irrelevant and its prejudicial effect outweighed its probative value.

The court dismissed the application, finding the video was sufficiently proximate in time to the murder and admissible as a party admission, subject to limiting instructions to the jury regarding out-of-court statements and unconscious racial bias.

The accused was convicted of second degree murder for shooting his girlfriend three times, including while she was on the phone with a 911 operator.

The Crown sought a parole ineligibility period of 17 to 20 years, while the defence sought 10 to 12 years.

The court found the domestic nature of the homicide, the abuse of trust, the use of a firearm, and the callousness of the killing to be significant aggravating factors.

Mitigating factors included the accused's expressions of regret and the harsh conditions of his pre-trial custody during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The court sentenced the accused to life imprisonment with a parole ineligibility period of 14 years.

This is an application under section 276 of the Criminal Code to determine the admissibility of evidence regarding a complainant's prior sexual activity in a preliminary inquiry for human trafficking and related sexual services offences.

The court considered whether section 276 applied, given the charges were not explicitly listed sexual offences, and whether the common law Seaboyer regime should apply.

The court adopted the reasoning that section 276 only applies if a listed offence is directly implicated or connected, rejecting the "sexual milieu" test.

It also declined to extend the Seaboyer common law regime to sexual services offences, emphasizing judicial restraint and parliamentary intent.

Consequently, neither section 276 nor Seaboyer applied, and admissibility would be governed by general rules of evidence.

The accused was charged with the first-degree murder of his intimate partner, whom he shot three times.

The defence argued that the accused was in a drug-induced psychosis at the time of the shooting and lacked the specific intent for murder, seeking a verdict of manslaughter.

The Crown argued the killing was planned and deliberate.

The court admitted various hearsay statements and preposterous utterances to assess the accused's state of mind.

The court rejected the defence's expert psychiatric evidence, finding the accused had the intent to kill.

However, the court found the Crown failed to prove the murder was planned and deliberate.

The accused was found guilty of second-degree murder.

The appellant, a high school math teacher, appealed his convictions for sexual assault and sexual exploitation of a 16-year-old student.

He argued the trial judge erred by treating a cross-examination question as evidence, failing to address improbabilities in the complainant's evidence, and attaching no weight to his good character evidence.

The Summary Conviction Appeal Court dismissed the appeal, finding that any error regarding the cross-examination question was harmless, the trial judge's credibility assessments were reasonable and supported by the evidence, and the trial judge did not err in her treatment of the character evidence given the private nature of the offences.