The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled in a judgment released Friday that an end to court proceedings under the Jordan ruling should not have been granted to a man accused of sexual assault. This decision clarifies that the counter starts again at zero when a second trial is ordered.
The position of the highest court in the country was endorsed by eight out of nine judges.
In this case, the Crown had been trying since 2018 to hold a second trial to try a Quebecer acquitted of seven counts of sexual assault in 2017. The septuagenarian cannot be identified due to a publication ban.
His second trial could not be held because the man had successfully invoked the Jordan decision based on the delays of his first trial.
However, a majority of Supreme Court judges have now overturned the stay of legal proceedings by ruling that the delays in the first trial could not be taken into account. The accused will therefore have to defend himself again before the Court of Québec.
“The effect of issuing an order for a new trial is to set the hands of the constitutional clock that calculates delay back to zero,” Chief Justice Richard Wagner wrote on behalf of the majority justices.
Judge Wagner nevertheless clarified that it was possible to take time into account in the first instance “in certain exceptional circumstances”, although this does not apply in this case.
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The majority judges believe that the accused was too late in invoking the Jordan decision, which establishes a maximum ceiling of 18 months in provincial court and 30 months for superior courts.
“The respondent did not act in time. Indeed, neither before nor during the holding of his first trial did the respondent raise the violation of his right to be tried within a reasonable time, one can read. Nor did he make any such submission to the Court of Appeal after the Crown decided to appeal the verdict. »
The late challenge to deadlines “harms the sound administration of justice,” the Supreme Court has determined.
Dissenting judge Suzanne Côté, for her part, assessed that the accused cannot be blamed for not having invoked the Jordan decision during his first trial – before the Court of Quebec – since he hoped to be acquitted.
The man was acquitted in February 2017. The total delay between the time of the charge and the verdict had been just over 72 months, of which 62 months were attributable to the Crown, and the accused did not invoke undue delays.
However, in June 2018, the Court of Appeal quashed the acquittal, citing errors of law by the trial judge and ordered a new trial. It was following this decision that the accused requested a stay of proceedings based on the issue of undue delay, even if the new trial was to end at the end of May 2019, i.e. 11 months after the decision to order a new trial.
In February 2019, the judge who was to hear the new trial agreed with the accused, finding that the delays in the first trial had been unreasonable, and ordered a stay of proceedings. The Crown appealed this decision.
In May 2020, three judges of the Court of Appeal unanimously upheld this decision. The court clarified that even if the first trial was over, it did not mean that the defendant’s rights had expired.
The Supreme Court reversed this decision. The accused will therefore have to undergo a new trial before the Court of Quebec.
With information from Pierre Saint-Arnaud