Found guilty of sexual assault following a trial which took place in English, a bilingual French-speaker obtained the annulment of his conviction because his linguistic rights were violated, ruled the Supreme Court of Canada. He will have to undergo a new trial, this time in French.
In 2020, Frank Tayo Tompouba was sentenced to 90 days in prison and 3 years of probation after having a non-consensual sexual relationship with a woman he met on Tinder in 2017 in Kamloops.
During his arrest and during his trial, the French-speaker from Cameroon spoke “fluidly and logically” in English, wrote Chief Justice Richard Wagner. It was only when appealing his conviction that he alleged his language rights had been violated. Mr. Tayo Tompouba had, in fact, never been informed of his right to be tried in French, as required by subsection 530(3) of the Criminal Code.
“The duty rests first and foremost on the Court to inform the accused” of his right, explains François Larocque, professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa.
Despite this admitted “failure”, the British Columbia Court of Appeal rejected his appeal in 2022, ruling that the accused had “testified in English without apparent difficulty”. Nearly two years later, the country’s highest court finally ruled in his favor, citing “an error of law which caused significant harm to Mr. Tayo Tompouba.” “The conviction is annulled and a new trial in French is ordered,” wrote Mr.e Wagner in a decision published Friday.
“Historic” decision
This decision is “quite spectacular”, according to Mr. Larocque, since the Supreme Court “clarifies and provides important details for all the criminal courts in the country”. “This is a major decision by the Supreme Court of Canada which reaffirms the centrality of linguistic rights in our legal order,” he assures.
The Jurists Power Law firm, which defended the accused, welcomed in a press release a “historic judgment on access to justice in both official languages”, which “confirms the importance of institutional bilingualism in the judicial system canadian “.
With this decision, the Supreme Court affirms that linguistic rights are “not ordinary or trivial rights, they are rights of substance and constitutional resonance,” asserts Mr. Larocque, emphasizing a link with the Beaulac decision.
In 1999, Judge Michel Bastarache granted a new trial to a French-speaking British Columbian, Jean Victor Beaulac, who had been found guilty of premeditated murder during a trial held in English. The Supreme Court ruled that, even though he spoke English, his right to a trial in the language of his choice had been violated.
“The fact that a bilingual person expresses himself in the language of the majority does not necessarily reflect a preference for that language,” Justice Wagner in turn recalled.
Avoid “abuse”
Two dissenting judges, who rejected the appeal, believe, as the Court of Appeal feared, that “public confidence in the administration of justice would be undermined if an appellant who knew his linguistic rights, but who waited to be found guilty before raising the violation of s. 530(3), nevertheless benefited from a new trial on this ground.”
If it is “possible that defendants could benefit on appeal, for purely strategic purposes, from a violation of their linguistic rights”, Judge Wagner considers that such “abuses” can be “easy[ment] » avoided “by the implementation of systematic practices to ensure that the obligation to provide information”, provided for in the Criminal Code, “is respected in all cases”.
“It may happen that accused persons are not duly informed of this fundamental linguistic right and its terms,” recalled the Supreme Court, adding that this case “reminds us that linguistic minorities in Canada still too often encounter difficulties in accessing justice in the official language of their choice.”
This report is supported by the Local Journalism Initiative, funded by the Government of Canada.