10 drug-related charges against man thrown out because of delay in case
Jeremy Lemioer entered court facing 10 charges stemming from a large-scale drug bust and left a free man after the case against him was tossed out because the wheels of justice slowed to a four-year crawl.
“The delay is not reasonable,” Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Richard Elson ruled Thursday.
Arrested in June 2013, Lemioer’s trial was set for June this year.
“The court has no choice but to direct that a stay be entered,” Elson said, ending charges against the 34-year-old Regina man.
Lemioer is the latest accused to benefit from a Supreme Court decision that took aim at the justice system for a “culture of complacency” in ensuring an accused’s charter-protected right to a trial in a reasonable amount of time. Called the Jordan decision, it set chargeto-trial timelines at 18 months in provincial court and 30 months at Queen’s Bench. Minus delays caused or waived by the defence or barring “exceptional circumstances,” cases exceeding the time frames risk being thrown out.
“It would not be unfair to say that the decision in Jordan has had a considerable, if not dramatic, impact on all aspects of the administration of justice in Canada,” said Elson.
Lemioer was one of eight people arrested in June 2013 by the Integrated Organized Crime South Unit, with RCMP and Regina police officers. Dubbed “Project Fabaft,” the investigation included searches at five Regina properties and three in B.C. and resulted in the seizure of 1.5 kilograms of cocaine, 1.1 kilograms of marijuana, about $120,000 cash and numerous guns.
Alleged to have played a key role in the operation, Lemioer was facing charges of conspiracy to traffic, trafficking cocaine, trafficking marijuana, possession of cocaine and marijuana for the purpose of trafficking, possession of property exceeding $5,000 knowing it was obtained by crime, unlawful confinement and weapons offences.
Elson calculated the time between arrest to the conclusion of a trial at 48 months and 20 days. The accused has been on bail most of the time. After subtracting two months’ delay caused by the defence when Lemioer switched lawyers early on, Elson said the remaining time was outside the guideline.
The bulk of the delay in dispute — 13 months and 20 days — occurred because Lemioer’s co-accused, his then common-law partner, had problems retaining a lawyer. Her original defence counsel withdrew because he wasn’t being paid, then she had to apply for and retain court-appointed counsel. The prosecutor handling the case at that time didn’t oppose the withdrawal, which resulted in rescheduling the preliminary hearing even though Lemioer’s lawyer was willing to proceed.
The Crown and defence also disputed who was responsible for a delay arising when two pages of confidential information were inadvertently given to the defence. A flash drive containing 6,400 documents had to go back to the Crown for vetting and wasn’t promptly returned. The preliminary hearing was again rescheduled.
Federal Crown prosecutor Robin Neufeld, who wasn’t the original lawyer on the file, contended much of the delay was due to defence applications or under exceptional circumstances. But defence lawyer Sharon Fox successfully argued otherwise.