Tracy Lee Kozlowski

The appellant, Adu-Bekoe, appealed his conviction and sentence, arguing a breach of his s. 11(b) Charter right to be tried within a reasonable time due to post-verdict sentencing delay.

The trial judge had dismissed his application for a stay of proceedings.

The Court of Appeal re-evaluated the delay, finding a net delay of just under eight months, which was presumptively unreasonable under the five-month ceiling established in R. v. Charley.

However, the court determined that the Crown's dangerous offender application, which was not frivolous, constituted an exceptional circumstance.

After attributing three months to this application (two for preparation and one for the decision), the remaining post-verdict sentencing delay was just under five months, falling within the presumptive ceiling.

Consequently, the court found no Charter breach and dismissed the appeal.

The appellant appealed a 20-year sentence of imprisonment imposed in 2014 for historical sexual offences committed in 1981 and 1993.

The appellant pleaded guilty to rape, sexual assault with a weapon, unlawful confinement, robbery, and uttering death threats.

The sentencing judge imposed consecutive sentences emphasizing the need to separate the offender from society based on his high risk assessment and violent criminal record.

The appellant challenged the sentence on multiple grounds, including claims regarding the weight given to mitigating factors and the impact of pre- and post-sentence solitary confinement.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding the sentence entirely fit given the circumstances of the offences, the offender's criminal history, and the sentencing objectives of denunciation and public protection.

The appellant was convicted of six offences: conspiracy to traffic firearms, conspiracy to traffic cocaine, possession of a firearm for the purpose of transfer, possession of an unlicensed firearm, possession of a firearm with its serial number removed, and possession of property obtained by crime.

The appeal raised three grounds: the jury selection procedure, the refusal to sever charges, and jury instructions.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal on the jury selection ground, finding that the trial judge erred in ruling he lacked jurisdiction to order exclusion of unsworn jurors while using rotating triers.

The appellant had specifically requested this procedure and was deprived of his chosen option when forced to select between static triers with full exclusion or rotating triers with no exclusion.

The Court found this error could not be cured by the curative proviso and ordered a new trial.

The appellant was convicted of two counts of first degree murder arising from the deaths of two sex trade workers found in different locations in the Niagara Region approximately 29 months apart.

Both victims died of blunt-force trauma to the head, and blood of both victims was found in the appellant's residences.

The trial judge admitted evidence of one count as similar act evidence on the other count and refused to sever the counts.

The trial judge also refused to discharge a juror who had a prior acquaintance with the victim's stepmother, and declined to leave manslaughter as an included offence.

The Court of Appeal found multiple errors: the similar act evidence did not meet the required threshold of striking similarity, the juror should have been discharged to preserve the appearance of fairness, and manslaughter should have been left to the jury.

The court also addressed a Charter breach regarding live monitoring conditions in wiretap authorizations but found the evidence admissible under section 24(2).

The appellant appealed his conviction for laundering proceeds of crime contrary to section 462.31 of the Criminal Code and sought leave to appeal his sentence.

The trial judge convicted the appellant of laundering a bank draft obtained through a counterfeit cheque fraud scheme.

The appellant raised four grounds of appeal: (1) that the trial judge erred in dismissing his section 11(b) Charter application regarding trial delay; (2) that the actus reus of the offence was not made out because the bank draft was revoked before it could be cashed; (3) that the mens rea was not satisfied because the appellant was not willfully blind to the fraudulent origin of the bank draft; and (4) that the trial judge erred in refusing to permit the appellant to reopen his defence to call further medical evidence.

The Court of Appeal dismissed all grounds of appeal and upheld the conviction and sentence.

The applicant sought review of a detention order made by a Superior Court judge who had vacated a release order issued by a committing justice at the conclusion of a preliminary inquiry.

The applicant argued that allowing a Superior Court judge to review another Superior Court judge's bail order was inconsistent with the hierarchical structure of Canada's bail system.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the application, holding that the Criminal Code provisions contemplate multiple review opportunities and that judges of the Court of Appeal and Superior Court of Justice have equal review jurisdiction under sections 520 and 521 of the Criminal Code.

The court rejected the assertion of legal error as a basis for establishing special circumstances warranting appellate review.

The Crown appealed a stay of proceedings granted by the trial judge for unreasonable delay under s. 11(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The accused was charged with first degree murder in December 2012 and the trial was scheduled to commence in November 2016, resulting in a total delay of 48 months.

The trial judge found that after deducting defence delay and discrete events, the net delay of 40 months exceeded the 30-month presumptive ceiling established in R. v. Jordan and was not justified by case complexity or the transitional exceptional circumstance.

The Court of Appeal allowed the Crown's appeal, finding that the trial judge erred in her complexity analysis and her application of the transitional exceptional circumstance.

The court held that the delay was justified under the transitional exceptional circumstance because the case was prosecuted almost entirely prior to Jordan's release and would not have resulted in a stay under the previous Morin framework.

The appellant appealed his convictions for sexual offences arising from incidents alleged to have occurred 33 years prior, when the appellant was 14 years old and babysat the complainant, who was nearly 6 years old at the time.

The trial judge convicted the appellant based on acceptance of the complainant's evidence over the appellant's denial.

The Court of Appeal found that the trial judge erred in applying the principle from R. v. J.J.R.D. by failing to provide a "considered and reasoned" analysis of the complainant's evidence.

Although the trial judge identified the need for confirmatory evidence, he failed to identify any independent evidence supporting the complainant's credibility.

The appeal was allowed, convictions were set aside, and a new trial was ordered.

A criminal appeal considered whether a nearly three-year period between charge and trial infringed the accused’s s. 11(b) Charter right to be tried within a reasonable time.

Applying the new Jordan framework, the majority held the net delay exceeded the 30-month ceiling for superior court matters and was not justified by exceptional or transitional circumstances.

The Court found the matter was relatively straightforward, institutional delay was substantial, and the Crown did not establish reasonableness.

A stay entered by the provincial appellate court was upheld, with dissenting reasons that would have restored the convictions under a different balancing approach.