Three recent
decisions:
Of narrow
interest is R v Quesnelle, 2014
SCC 46 (9 July 2014) on when a defendant can have copies of reports, recorded
by the police, of a complainant’s allegation of other offending. At issue was
the construction of the Criminal Code, ss 278.1
to 278.91.
Slightly more
interesting is R v Sipos, 2014
SCC 47 (10 July 2014) on when an appellate court should receive fresh
evidence if it finds error of law, or unreasonableness, in the decision of the
court below. Further, recognising that there can be a greater role for fresh
evidence when the issue is unreasonableness, the appellate court may
nevertheless conclude that even if the errors were corrected, or the fresh
evidence were to be taken into account, the decision of the court below should
be upheld. The context of this appeal was a sentencing determination of the
defendant’s dangerousness, Criminal Code ss 753,
759.
And also of
interest – at least for its quirky facts - is the ‘apparent bias’ case of the
Judicial Committee, Yiacoub v R [2014] UKPC 22 (10
July 2014), holding that a judge whose decision is to be appealed may not take
part in the selection of the appellate bench:
“[15]
The difference in the present case is that the Presiding Judge found himself
not simply appointing a judge to deal with a matter of general concern, but
nominating a judge to hear an appeal from himself. The Board is satisfied that
that carries an appearance of lack of independence and impartiality in relation
to the process, viewed as a whole, which would impact on an objective informed
observer. It is not difficult to imagine circumstances, under other regimes, in
which such a process could be open to abuse of the kind not suggested here to
have occurred in fact. The objective observer would, as it seems to the Board,
say of such a process ‘That surely cannot be right’.”
Here, those
gender pronouns are appropriate because the reference is specifically to a male
judge, but it is an interesting – or moderately interesting – and not a particularly
easy exercise to rework that first sentence into gender-neutral
English. You may need to resort to more than one sentence, for example (and
I’m not suggesting this is the best way of doing it):
