Court ruling may quicken impaired driving trials

Expert testimony to be permitted as evidence

Expert testimony can be admitted in drugged-driving trials without a preliminary examination of the evidence, the Supreme Court said Thursday in a decision that could help expedite the judicial process in the legalized-marijuana era.

The 5-2 court decision on the case of an Ottawa motorist comes as the federal government prepares to introduce legislation to legalize the recreational use of pot.

“Driving while impaired by drugs is a dangerous and, sadly, common activity, prohibited by the Criminal Code,” Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote in her reasons for the majority decision.

“Parliament long ago established a regime to enforce the law against alcohol-impaired driving, with breathalyzer testing and analyst certification at its centre. Enforcing the offence of drugimpaired driving was more elusive.”

In 2008, Parliament sought to confront that challenge with a new regime that includes a 12-part evaluation for drug impairment, to be administered by specially training police officers — socalled “drug-recognition experts.”

In May 2009, Carson Bingley cut off a driver, crossed the centre line and drove into the opposite lane, nearly striking oncoming traffic before bumping into a car in a nearby parking lot.

He failed sobriety tests administered by a drug-recognition expert and admitted to smoking marijuana.

Bingley was acquitted of driving while drug-impaired despite the expert’s evidence, which the judge found could be admitted without a voir dire, or preliminary examination of the evidence.

An appeal led to a second trial, where a judge found that the evidence must be vetted in a voir dire.

The subsequent preliminary examination led the judge to rule the expert evidence inadmissible, resulting in a second acquittal.

The Crown successfully appealed and a third trial was ordered; Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling means that trial will go ahead.

At issue before the Supreme Court was whether a drug-recognition expert has expertise beyond the knowledge and experience of a trial judge.

In the decision, McLachlin said the expert does indeed have such knowledge. A trial judge is therefore not obliged to hold a voir dire to determine the admissibility of the expert’s evidence, she said, adding that doing otherwise would be “a waste of judicial resources.”