Gun charge in city shooting thrown out over trial delay

A man caught with a gun likely used in a Vancouver shooting has had his charges stayed because his case took too long to get to trial.

Brandon Akil Cooper was arrested on Nov. 28, 2013, in connection with the shooting that sent Shawn Brown to hospital a month earlier.

Cooper’s trial was set for March 2017, which his lawyer argued was beyond the time frame set out by a Supreme Court of Canada ruling last summer.

Vancouver Provincial Court Judge Gregory Rideout agreed, saying Cooper’s Charter rights were violated by the delay in going to trial.

Rideout said most of the delay in the case was because the prosecutor was late in disclosing police documents called ITOs used to get search warrants in the case.

“I find that the main causes of the delay in this case are the delay of the Crown in disclosing in a timely way the particulars of ITO #1 and of the significant and serious failure of the Crown to disclose in a timely way the particulars of ITO #2,” Rideout said in his Jan. 24 ruling.

“The failure to disclose the two ITOs in a timely manner was entirely in the hands of the Crown.”

He said the Crown offered no “exceptional circumstances” explaining the delay.

“The applicant’s right to be tried within a reasonable time as guaranteed by section 11(b) of the Charter has been infringed. A stay of proceedings is directed,” Rideout said.

Cooper, now 28, was one of four “persons of interest” identified by Vancouver police after Brown was shot near Fraser and East 17th Avenue on Oct. 25, 2013, during a suspected drug transaction.

“Through the use of surveillance, witness information, forensic evidence and source information obtained as a result of warrants, the persons of interest, including the applicant, became suspects in the shooting,” Rideout said.

Investigators got search warrants for a storage locker in Burnaby and a residence on Blundell Road in Richmond, where Cooper was arrested.

“During the course of his arrest, the applicant was observed dropping a pistol that was later seized. It was determined that this pistol was likely the pistol used to shoot Shawn Brown,” Rideout said in his ruling.

Police also “recovered a number of pistols, live rounds of ammunition, 11 cellular phones and three SIM cards” during the Richmond search.

At the Burnaby locker they found 24 containers of marijuana, more ammunition, Cooper’s ID and his fingerprints on one of the pot containers.

He was charged with seven firearms and drug trafficking counts, but not with shooting Brown.

Rideout noted that a DNA swab taken from Cooper “did not match DNA profiles recovered from exhibits found at the scene of the shooting.”

Cooper’s case would have concluded more than 39 months after he was charged as it was scheduled, Rideout said.

Canada’s highest court noted in its landmark 2016 ruling that cases at the provincial court level should conclude within 18 months unless there are extraordinary circumstances. Cases at the superior court level should be completed within 30 months, the SCC said.