Men charged in Quesnel grow-op bust walk free
Two men who were charged after police raided a suspected marijuana grow-op near Quesnel more than four years ago have walked free after a judge found that it took too long for the case to get to trial.
In August 2013, Robert Bernardt Thomson and Trevor Wishart were arrested and later charged with unlawfully producing a controlled substance and possession of a controlled substance for the purpose of trafficking.
In April 2014, the two men, who had been released on an undertaking shortly after they were arrested, elected to be tried in B.C. Supreme Court by a judge alone and requested a preliminary hearing.
The preliminary hearing began in September 2016 and ended in March 2017, when they were committed to stand trial.
A five-day trial date was set for January 2018 but in August this year the accused applied to have the charges stayed on the grounds that their right to be tried within a reasonable time had been breached.
In assessing the application, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Marguerite Church noted that the time between the charges being laid in October 2013 and the trial was about 51 months.
To deal with the increasing problem of trial delays in Canada, a ruling released by the Supreme Court of Canada in July 2016 set a ceiling of 30 months to get to trial for superior court cases.
The Crown argued that a large chunk of the delay for Thomson and Wishart could be attributed to the defence but the judge concluded that after considering defence delays, the net delay for Wishart was 41 months and the net delay for Thomson was 37 months.
Those delays took the case above the 30 month ceiling and were therefore “presumptively” unreasonable unless the Crown could prove there were exceptional circumstances warranting the delay.
The judge found that it was not a particularly complex case and while there were scheduling challenges with two accused, that issue did not add a sufficient layer of complexity to rebut the presumption that the delay was unreasonable.
While there was little doubt that the charges were serious and there was a clear societal interest in having a trial on its merits, the two men had also suffered prejudice due to the delays, she said.
“This prejudice arises as a result of the restrictions on their liberty over the past four years, specifically in relation to their restrictive bail conditions,” the judge said in deciding to stay the charges. “They have both lost employment opportunities as a consequence.
“They both have suffered and continue to suffer stress and the
In assessing the application, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Marguerite Church noted that the time between the charges being laid in October 2013 and the trial was about 51 months.
emotional strain of having these charges remain outstanding for a prolonged period and their ability to move on with their lives and make future plans has been seriously impaired.”
The case was prosecuted by the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, which said Friday that from July 2016, when the Supreme Court of Canada ruling was released, to Oct. 31 this year, judges had entered stays in 15 B.C. files it had handled arising from unreasonable delay.
The service, which handles drug and other federal prosecutions, said another 16 applications have been refused by the courts in that time, 19 applications are pending and the service itself has entered 18 stays on files affected by delays.