A Montreal Municipal Court judge has just ordered a halt to the legal process against a businessman accused of having driven a drunken boat on Lake Saint-Louis, on the grounds that his luxury yacht constituted one of his dwelling houses and that the Montreal police therefore did not have the right to enter it without a warrant, as in an ordinary vehicle.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
The facts date back to October 12, 2019. That day, James Bonnell was at the bar of the Lord Reading Yacht Club, in Beaconsfield, a city where he ran for mayor in the past. An argument breaks out with some of the people present. A lieutenant-detective from the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) on leave attends the scene.
Mr. Bonnell leaves the club, embarks on his boat, the Sand Say Ocean, a yacht some twenty meters long. According to the witnesses, the boat moved away towards the open sea. A call is made to 911 to report that Mr. Bonnell would be driving after having consumed a fair amount of alcohol. The lieutenant-detective on leave also takes the initiative to alert her colleagues, who rush to the scene.
PHOTO FROM BEACONSFIELD MARY CAMPAIGN AD
James Bonnell, while running for mayor of Beaconsfield, in 2017
After the boat returns to the dock, a little later, the police board. Mr. Bonnell tells them that they do not have permission to enter, but they enter the passenger compartment by forcing the sliding door and proceed to arrest him. According to the account of the SPVM agents, they then took him to the station, where he failed an alcohol test, which led to the filing of two counts of driving a means of transport with a rate of alcohol over the legal limit.
Not a normal vehicle, judge says
Before the municipal court, lawyer Eric Sutton, who represented Mr. Bonnell, asked for the judicial process to be stopped on the pretext that the boat constituted a dwelling house in good and due form. Barring exceptions, to enter a citizen’s house and arrest him, the police need a warrant issued by a judge. As the SPVM agents did not have a warrant, their entry was illegal, he argued.
“The yacht in question has a fully equipped kitchen, a master bedroom and a guest bedroom as well as two bathrooms,” Mr.and Sutton in his request, supporting photos.
PHOTO FROM COURT FILE
One of the bedrooms of Mr. Bonnell’s yacht
“The yacht is his residence in the sailing season. He was only returning to his residence in town to check the inventory and pick up the mail,” added the lawyer.
After hearing the motion and the accounts of the witnesses, Judge Steeve Larivière was convinced.
PHOTO FROM COURT FILE
Mr. Bonnell’s Yacht Kitchen
“The police admitted very candidly that they carried out their intervention as if it were a completely normal motor vehicle, when it was a dwelling house”, protested. he in his judgment dated December 13th.
The magistrate says he finds that the case concerns a citizen illegally arrested without a warrant in his dwelling house. He therefore ordered an immediate halt to the judicial process.
The police knew or should have known what behavior to adopt. This failure to respect established laws and the decisions of the courts is unacceptable, and the court must deviate from it, at the risk of descending into a police state.
Judge Steeve Larivière, in his judgment
The judge also noted certain contradictions in the comments of the police and witnesses who described Mr. Bonnell’s conduct and his condition.
Different from boat to boat
It is far from certain that such a conclusion could have been reached by a more modest boat owner. In 2017, the Ontario Court of Justice ruled that police did not violate the rights of a man arrested without a warrant as he slept in his 7-metre boat, which had a rudimentary shelter, a barbecue and a toilet. According to this judgment, the man could not expect to benefit in this boat from the same degree of legal protection as in his dwelling house, even if he often spent the night there.
In 2010, the Supreme Court had also determined that truckers who sleep in the sleeper compartment of their truck do not enjoy the same protection against police intrusions as if they were in a proper house.
James Bonnell, who maintains to this day that he did not drive the boat while intoxicated, was very satisfied with the judgment when contacted by The Press.
“I’m innocent, but I won’t soon forget that. It was quite traumatic,” he says.
I trust the police, I have family and good friends in the police. But in this case, there was an abuse of power. The issue was the lack of training and the fact that they were listening to a supervisor who was at the yacht club at the start and who had called her colleagues.
james bonnell
Mr. Bonnell doesn’t believe his story demonstrates that owners of luxury boats can fare better than others in court in cases involving driving under the influence of alcohol.
“You can have a $10,000 boat, but as long as it has a kitchen, a bathroom, a bedroom, and it’s docked, I think you can win. However, it cost me $15,000 to defend myself, and I’m not sure everyone can afford that,” he said.