Case information

None.

Case summaries are prepared by the Office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court of Canada (Law Branch). Please note that summaries are not provided to the Judges of the Court. They are placed on the Court file and website for information purposes only.

Criminal law - Importation and possession of cocaine - Whether the appellant’s trial was unfair - Whether the trial judge’s mischaracterization of the appellant’s defence could be severed from his assessment of the appellant’s credibility - Whether the trial judge erred by relying on fabrication and late disclosure of the appellant’s defence to disbelieve the appellant and infer guilt - Whether the trial judge erred in drawing an adverse inference from the appellant’s decision not to call a witness to support his defence of alibi, a defence he did not claim - Whether the trial judge erred by engaging in propensity reasoning - Whether the trial judge was allowed to use the discrepancy between the evidence of both accused to disbelieve each of them - Whether the trial judge erred by failing to consider the liability of each accused separately.

The appellant and a co-accused were convicted of importing cocaine and possessing cocaine for the purpose of trafficking. He and his co-accused drove a truck containing 3.5 million dollars’ worth of the drug from the United States into Canada. At trial, they each claimed they were blind couriers and knew nothing of the cocaine. On appeal, the appellant argued, among other things, that he was deprived of a fair trial. A majority of the Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal. Laskin J.A., dissenting, would have allowed the appeal and ordered a new trial. In his view, the trial judge made a litany of errors in assessing the appellant’s evidence and in rejecting his denial of the allegations which materially affected his assessment of the appellant’s credibility and tainted his credibility findings to such an extent that they deprived the appellant of a fair trial.