The Supreme Court of Canada has refused to stretch the rubber band in Jordan for a man accused of violently beating his wife. There will be no stay of proceedings for the Ontario scientist and university researcher who alleged that his right to have a trial within a reasonable time had been violated.
The highest court in the country delivered its judgment on Wednesday, shortly after hearing presentations from the man’s lawyer and that of the Crown prosecutor.
Adeel Safdar was arrested in April 2015, along with his brother and his mother: they were all accused of inflicting numerous injuries on the researcher’s wife as well as subjecting her to multiple ill-treatment in the over time.
This case was “weird, sad, complex and disturbing”, according to the judge who heard it in Ontario.
At the end of the trial, after the closing arguments of the lawyers, and while the magistrate was writing the reasons for his decision, the defense sent a request for a stay of proceedings.
The judge therefore put his decision aside, and focused on this request. It primarily alleged — but other elements of the calculation were also questioned — that the criminal proceedings exceeded the 30-month cap prescribed by the Supreme Court’s 2016 Jordan decision. Beyond that period — unless there are special circumstances — a stay of proceedings must be ordered, since an accused has the right to be tried within a reasonable time, under section 11 b of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The judge terminated the proceedings against the trio and Adeel Safdar left the court room as a free man.
Dissatisfied, the Crown appealed this decision and won its case before the Ontario Court of Appeal in April 2021.
Then, in June 2021, the trial judge delivered his more than 150-page verdict. He acquitted the brother and mother, but found Adeel Safdar guilty of aggravated assault for fracturing his wife’s jaw in two places, as well as permanently disfiguring her ear.
The man then seized the Supreme Court, insisting on getting out unscathed with a stay of proceedings – and without conviction.
The Supreme Court told him no. She relied on her own R. v. KGK, returned in 2020, i.e. after the trial of Adeel Safdar. In this case, it had already excluded the judge’s deliberation time from the calculation of the maximum period of 30 months. In this previous judgment, the Court had already ruled that the period of time between the pleadings and the request for a stay of proceedings could not be counted.
However, without this post-trial period, the criminal proceedings lasted 29.25 months, the Court confirmed. The period of the Jordan judgment is calculated between the date of the charge and the end of the pleadings, and “not with the period after the trial”, said Supreme Court Justice Russell Brown, who read the decision on Wednesday . Judicial deliberation should not be counted, he continued, agreeing with the Court of Appeal and the Crown.