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The affidavit and attached Chart were rightly denied exhibit status because the Crown conceded the Chart is not admissible for the truth of its contents and the Chart was intended only as an aide for counsel; admitting it as a formal exhibit would serve no logical evidentiary purpose and the court, exercising case management discretion, therefore dismissed the application.
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Ontario Court of Appeal dismissed a sexual assault conviction appeal, finding no error in the jury instructions, no improper Crown closing, and no miscarriage of justice.
Because the Crown's submission was rooted in the evidence actually led at trial (the mother did not testify to witnessing the alleged incidents) and the defence consciously chose not to question the mother about her police statement, the trial judge did not err in refusing to instruct the jury to ignore the Crown's submission; no prejudice or miscarriage of justice was shown and the appeal was dismissed.
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The Crown's submission that the appellant's lack of romantic relationships provided a motive was irrelevant, prejudicial and improperly expressed as counsel's opinion; the trial judge erred by not correcting the impropriety and by incorporating the Crown's position into the jury charge, and the error was not trivial and required setting aside the conviction and ordering a new trial.
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The trial judge erred procedurally in the mechanical allocation of peremptory challenges but the error did not prejudice the appellant's s.11(d) right to trial by an impartial jury and is cured by s.686(1)(b)(iv); the remaining complaints about jury selection, jury question response, lost juror notes, Crown closing and corrective instructions, jury instructions on consent and post-offence conduct, and evidentiary rulings did not constitute reversible error, therefore the appeal is dismissed and convictions are upheld.
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The court refused a post-trial mistrial application in a personal injury case, holding the challenged credibility findings were not tainted by a manifest factual error.
The Supreme Court of Canada held that Crown counsel’s improper personal anecdote in closing submissions did not make the trial unfair, so the appeal was dismissed.
The court granted a mistrial after finding Crown closing submissions repeatedly relied on facts not in evidence, stereotypes, and misstatements that fatally compromised trial fairness.
Majority: application judge correctly excluded the double-hearsay for lack of threshold reliability; Crown’s impugned closing submissions did not render the trial unfair given context and trial judge’s handling; and there was an evidentiary foundation to instruct the jury on party liability (aiding or co-principal), so conviction stands. Dissent: party liability instruction lacked an air of reality and aiding instruction was inadequate, warranting a new trial.
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The Crown's repeated invitation to propensity reasoning and inflammatory rhetoric, together with other improper submissions that bolstered the complainant and invited speculation, cumulatively deprived the appellant of a fair trial because the trial judge's corrective instruction and charge were insufficiently specific and forceful to cure the prejudice; accordingly the appeal is allowed, convictions are quashed and a new trial is ordered.
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