(Ottawa) Around thirty people who were arrested in Quebec in 2016 for drug-related offenses and who had obtained a stay of proceedings will ultimately have to undergo a new trial, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Friday.
The judgment of the highest court in the country also means that the accused will have a new opportunity to request a stay of proceedings, this time in accordance with the guidelines established by the Supreme Court.
Eight years ago, as part of a large-scale police operation nicknamed “Project Nandou”, carried out mainly in the Trois-Rivières region, 31 people were arrested and charged with offenses linked to production and trafficking. narcotics, especially cannabis.
The arrests took place in several locations and the accused were divided into four separate groups for separate trials.
The defendants in the first group then filed a motion for a stay of proceedings, alleging violations of their constitutional rights regarding police searches and “prompt” recourse to counsel.
In 2018, a Superior Court judge effectively ordered a stay of proceedings for this first group, and the parties subsequently agreed that this decision would also apply to the accused in the other three groups.
The Quebec Court of Appeal annulled these two judgments of the Superior Court and ordered a new trial to be held, including a new hearing on the motion to stay the proceedings, on the grounds that not all of the accused had “ the interest required” to obtain it.
The case was then referred to the Supreme Court, which now dismisses the appeal.
Writing for the majority, Justice Michelle O’Bonsawin noted that two types of state conduct meet the threshold required to establish the existence of an “abuse of process.”
The first is state conduct that would compromise the fairness of the trial. The second includes behaviors that, while not necessarily threatening the fairness of the trial, “nevertheless undermine the integrity of the justice system.”
Justice O’Bonsawin concluded that all of the defendants in this case had standing to seek a stay of proceedings, even though some of them had not suffered a violation of their constitutional rights that would compromise the fairness of the trial or would result in an abuse of procedure.
However, she wrote, the trial judge’s task was to determine whether each individual’s right to “prompt” recourse to the assistance of a lawyer had been violated — and the Superior Court judge did not didn’t do it.
Justice O’Bonsawin wrote that it was necessary to determine whether the violations as a whole met the threshold for abuse of process in the second category of conduct — those that could “undermine the integrity of the justice system.”
Finally, she concludes that the Superior Court judge also erred in ordering a stay of proceedings for all the accused, “without having first considered the existence of less draconian remedies which could have completely corrected the infringement.” to the integrity of the justice system that he believed he had identified.”
These errors therefore justify the holding of a new trial, including new hearings on the motions to stay the proceedings, writes Judge O’Bonsawin.