Tracy Lee Kozlowski

The appellant, J.K., appealed his conviction for sexual assault and his two-year prison sentence.

The conviction appeal challenged the trial judge's assessment of evidence regarding a lodged tampon and the dismissal of a Charter application for pre-conviction delay.

The sentence appeal contested the finding of no unreasonable post-conviction delay and sought a sentence reduction.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the fresh evidence on the tampon issue, finding it inadmissible under Palmer criteria.

It upheld the trial judge's dismissal of the s. 11(b) application, justifying the nine-month pre-conviction delay (due to an outstanding bench warrant) under the transitional exceptional circumstance and the 13-month post-conviction delay (related to a Gladue report) by deducting six months for administrative error as a discrete exceptional event and justifying the remainder under transitional exceptional circumstances.

The two-year sentence was found fit, with the trial judge having appropriately considered aggravating and mitigating factors, including the appellant's personal circumstances and the impact of bail conditions.

The Crown appealed a Superior Court order staying charges against three respondents (two brothers and their mother) due to unreasonable delay under s. 11(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The trial judge had calculated the delay at 32 months, exceeding the 30-month Jordan ceiling.

The Court of Appeal found that the trial judge erred in law by including the period from the end of evidence and argument until the stay decision in the Jordan ceiling calculation, based on the Supreme Court's decision in R. v. K.G.K. Correcting this error reduced the net delay to 29.25 months, falling below the ceiling.

The Court also found no error in the trial judge's characterization of other delay periods and concluded that the delay was not unreasonable, even if below the ceiling.

The appeal was allowed, the stay order was set aside, and the matter was remitted to the trial judge to release the verdict.

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 applicant, charged with drug-impaired driving, sought leave to appeal a summary conviction appeal judge's decision setting aside a stay of proceedings for unreasonable delay under s. 11(b) of the Charter.

The applicant argued the appeal judge erred in calculating the delay by excluding the time taken by the Crown's certiorari application regarding the disclosure of drug recognition expert logs, and by selecting an incorrect end-date for the trial.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the application for leave to appeal, finding no clear error of law or issue of significance beyond the case, as the appeal judge properly applied the Tsega framework to the certiorari delay and reasonably relied on the end-date accepted by the parties below.

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.

The appellant appealed a manslaughter conviction arising from a fatal stabbing during a bar fight.

He argued that the trial judge erred by excluding a paramedic's statement recounting an alleged witness account said to support self-defence and to impeach a Crown witness, and by failing to leave accident with the jury.

The Court of Appeal held that the first level of hearsay was not shown to be sufficiently reliable, so the statement was inadmissible both substantively and for impeachment.

It further held that the accident defence lacked an air of reality because there was no evidentiary foundation explaining how the deceased could have been stabbed multiple times accidentally.

The appeal was dismissed.

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.

The appellant appealed his conviction for aggravated assault and his 38-month sentence, arguing he should have been convicted of the lesser offence of assault causing bodily harm and that the sentence was out of range.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeals, finding the trial judge was entitled to conclude the prolonged beating and choking endangered the victim's life.

The sentence was deemed appropriate for a vicious domestic assault involving a repeat victim and breaches of court orders.

A duplicative conviction for assault causing bodily harm was stayed on consent.

The appellant appealed his sentence for impaired driving causing death and driving without an interlock device, specifically challenging the lifetime driving prohibition imposed following a 5-year penitentiary term.

This was his third impaired driving conviction.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding the lifetime ban was within the trial judge's discretion and necessary for the protection of the public.

The appellant was convicted of aggravated assault following an incident at a shelter.

He appealed his conviction, arguing that the trial judge erred in admitting his unredacted criminal record and in finding that his statement to police was voluntary and not in breach of his s. 10(b) Charter rights.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding no error in the trial judge's handling of the criminal record or her conclusion that no re-caution was required despite the passage of time, alleged memory loss, and change in jeopardy during the police interview.

The appellant appealed his conviction, arguing that inadvertent bad character evidence given by two witnesses prejudiced the jury and was not cured by the trial judge's instructions.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, agreeing with the trial judge that strong and unequivocal mid-trial and final instructions preserved the fairness of the trial, making a mistrial unnecessary.

The sentence appeal was abandoned.

The appellant was convicted of second degree murder based entirely on circumstantial evidence.

At trial, the defence relied heavily on the absence of any forensic evidence linking the appellant to the brutal killing.

The trial judge directed defence counsel not to submit that the absence of forensic evidence made it impossible for the appellant to be the killer, and gave the jury a 'CSI instruction' warning that real-life forensic evidence is not as definitive as portrayed on television.

On appeal, the appellant argued these actions resulted in an unfair trial.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding that while the 'CSI instruction' was unwarranted, it did not affect the result when considered in the context of the entire jury charge, which properly instructed the jury on reasonable doubt and the absence of evidence.

The appellant challenged convictions for sexual assault and sexual interference involving historic abuse of a child relative, and also appealed a six-year penitentiary sentence.

The court refused to admit fresh evidence consisting of a urologist's report because the proposed evidence merely bolstered unchallenged trial evidence and could not reasonably have affected the verdict.

Although the Crown's cross-examination about abortion risks was inflammatory and inappropriate, it did not render the trial unfair or cause a miscarriage of justice.

The court also held that the absence of a limiting instruction on one prior consistent statement was not fatal in light of the way prior statements were used at trial, and upheld the sentence as fit.

The appellant appealed her convictions and sentence for fraud and uttering a forged document.

She had pled guilty but later moved to strike her pleas, which the trial judge refused.

The Court of Appeal upheld the trial judge's finding that the pleas were voluntary and informed.

The court also dismissed the sentence appeal, finding no error in the 22-month conditional sentence imposed for frauds totalling approximately $40,000 and the use of forged documents for a passport application.