Four court cases in province dismissed because of delays
In the year since the Supreme Court set rules for how long people can wait for criminal trials, four cases in Saskatchewan — including a sexual assault case — have been dismissed because of delays.
In a ruling last July, R. v Jordan, the Supreme Court of Canada said trials must go ahead in provincial court within 18 months of charges being laid and in superior court within 30 months of charges being laid. Unless there are exceptional circumstances, waits longer than that are deemed unreasonable and can result in charges being stayed. Applications to have this happen are called Jordan applications.
According to the Saskatchewan Ministry of Justice, four successful and five unsuccessful Jordan applications have been dealt with in the last 12 months.
“Public prosecutions takes the Supreme Court’s direction in the Jordan decision seriously and has examined the present situation. We’ve concluded that Saskatchewan is presently fairly well-situated in regards to time-to-trial,” ministry spokesperson Jordan Jackle wrote in an email.
“Most cases in Saskatchewan finish within the time limit and exceptional events are often the cause in the small number of cases that don’t.”
In a case dismissed in March, a man facing six charges — including failing to stop at the scene of an accident, obstructing justice and mischief — waited nearly five years for a trial.
“It’s very tough to have not just criminal charges hanging over your head, but serious criminal charges hanging over your head for quite some time,” said lawyer Adryan Toth, who submitted a successful Jordan application on the man’s behalf.
“It did impact on him emotionally. There was prejudice to it. He did actually have to see a counsellor at one point.”
Toth said while he understands concerns of victim groups who worry that Jordan applications will result in criminals being let off on technicalities, he believes the new rules surrounding time-to-trial benefit everyone and will result in fewer court delays in the future.
“Everyone who’s involved in the criminal justice system or the administration of justice needs to get serious about delay,” he said. “I would say, since Jordan has come down, the courts have been doing an excellent job of ensuring that things get marshalled forward quickly.”
Jackle said in Saskatchewan the average amount of time between a charge being laid and the conclusion of a trial is 77 days, well below the ceilings set out in the Jordan decision.
Despite this, he said the ministry is working to address delay issues and is taking steps such as assessing cases as early as possible to remove those that do not meet the prosecution standard.
“Not every matter needs to go to trial to achieve appropriate accountability, and identifying those cases and finding alternative ways to conclude them frees up room to get other cases to trial sooner,” Jackle said.
The three other cases dismissed in Saskatchewan because of delays in the last 12 months were a youth charged with two counts of sexual assault who had been waiting more than three years for a trial, a man charged with impaired driving who waited nearly two years for a trial and a man charged with indecent exposure after showing his genitals to a Home Depot cashier, who waited more than a year for a trial.