Court orders freed suspect back to trial
Accused killer had been let go due to delays
• Ontario’s highest court has ruled that an alleged killer must stand trial for first-degree murder in Ottawa even though it took four years for his case to go to a jury.
In a closely watched decision issued Thursday, the Court of Appeal for Ontario reinstated murder charges against former soldier Adam Picard, ruling that the delays in his case fell within exceptions set down by the Supreme Court in R. v. Jordan.
“In my view, the trial judge erred in her application of the transitional exceptional circumstance under Jordan,” Justice Paul Rouleau said in writing for the three-member appeal panel.
The court overturned the judge’s decision to toss out the murder case on the eve of Picard’s six-week trial.
Last November, in a case that sent shock waves through the province’s legal system, Ontario Superior Court Justice Julianne Parfett stunned an Ottawa courtroom by staying murder charges against Picard because of unreasonable delay as defined by the Supreme Court.
“I cannot but emphasize that the more serious the charges, the more the justice system has to work to ensure that the matter is tried within a reasonable time,” Parfett said. “The thread that runs through the present case is the culture of complacency that the Supreme Court condemned in Jordan.”
In July 2016, in R. v. Jordan, the Supreme Court said that even the most serious criminal cases must be concluded within 30 months of charges being laid.
But Ontario’s appeal court disagreed with Parfett’s interpretation of Jordan. The three-member panel said the case deserved more latitude since it predated the high court’s imposition of new trial delay limits, and would have been acceptable under the legal regime in place at the time of Picard’s arrest.
In her ruling, Parfett said the justice system had failed the public, the victim’s family and Picard, who had been held in custody for four years awaiting trial.
Picard walked out of court a free man 47 months after he was arrested on Dec. 12, 2012 in connection with the death of Fouad Nayel.
The 28-year-old construc- tion worker had been missing for five months when his decomposed remains were discovered in a wooded area near Calabogie in November 2012.
Before his disappearance, he had told his father, Amine, that he was driving to Petawawa and would be back with Chinese food to celebrate Father’s Day.
After being released from jail, Picard maintained his innocence in the case, telling reporters: “I’m relieved that is over and I would just like to get back to my life.”
Nayel’s father said the family’s hearts had been ripped out by the justice system. “If a person is found innocent by his peers so be it,” said Amine Nayel. “I believe in our system, but not now. The so-called system is broken. What happened to us is a grave mistake.”
The Crown appealed the decision to stay the first- degree murder charges, arguing that the judge had mischaracterized the nature of the delays and had failed to consider the case’s complexity.
In the Jordan decision and in two subsequent rulings, the Supreme Court established guidelines for courts to follow when considering whether a criminal case has taken too long to reach trial.
The rulings recognize that the strict timelines should not always be applied in cases that originated before the high court handed down its landmark Jordan ruling.
The Supreme Court has allowed lower courts a transition period to adjust to the new limits. During this period, the court said, judges can consider the seriousness of an offence, the complexity of a case and the court backlogs faced by a jurisdiction in deciding whether delays are unreasonable.
The high court said judges must also consider whether the delays would be considered unreasonable under the legal framework that existed before the Jordan ruling.
Ontario judges stayed 77 criminal cases in the first eights months after the Supreme Court imposed new limits on trial delays. They also rejected more than 125 stay applications brought by accused persons.
The Picard case was the only case in which murder charges had been stayed in Ontario.