Man seeks to retract guilty plea in sex case

Jeremy Melvin Carlson of Kelowna accused of sexually interfering with 8-year-old girl

A Kelowna man who pleaded guilty to sexually interfering with an eight-year-old girl is applying to have his guilty plea withdrawn.

Jeremy Melvin Carlson was charged with sexual assault and sexual interference of a person under the age of 16.

In November 2017, he pleaded guilty to the sexual interference charge.

In Kelowna court Thursday, defence lawyer Jacqueline Halliburn said Carlson intended to apply to withdraw his guilty plea on the basis of new information disclosed by the Crown.

Following sentencing submissions on April 30, Crown prosecutor Angela Ross said she received new information from the victim’s family regarding Carlson’s role as a person in a position of trust and that she intended to call the evidence.

Several people provided statements to police regarding this new evidence.

Transcriptions of those statements were provided to the defence on July 24 and 27, said Ross.

However, Halliburn requested additional disclosure, including the audio recordings of those statements, police notes and Crown notes.

She told the court she did not receive those items until Sept. 4.

On Aug. 30, Ross said she was no longer proceeding with her application to call the new evidence.

“Just because the Crown is not relying on the evidence, of course the defence still gets to look at it and review the position and how that affects the defence,” said Halliburn. “Having had the disclosure now for nine days, and having reviewed it with my client, my client has decided to proceed with applying to withdraw the guilty plea.”

The withdrawal application will be on the basis that Carlson was not fully informed when he entered his guilty plea, said Halliburn.

“One of the things that is required for a guilty plea is that it must be informed,” she said. “A guilty plea based on incomplete disclosure is not informed.”

According to Halliburn, the new evidence contradicts previous evidence and calls into question the credibility of a number of the Crown’s witnesses.

The new witness statements given to police deal with the accused being in a position of trust, not the offence itself, said Ross.

“I’m having a bit of a difficulty trying to understand my friend’s application to now withdraw a guilty plea on the basis of new information that doesn’t go to the offence itself. It goes to the aggravating factor, which the Crown is not seeking to prove beyond what is already before you,” she said in court.

Judge Monica McParland instructed counsel to go to the judicial case manager that afternoon and schedule a half-day appearance to deal with the application to withdraw the guilty plea.

“And of course, the application to withdraw a guilty plea is not made to me. It’s made to the judge who received the guilty plea,” she said. “The plea inquiry and the requirements of taking a plea were not satisfied by me. They were satisfied by Judge (Michelle) Daneliuk. I was not involved in that process at all.”

The application is scheduled to go before the court on Oct. 3.

This is not the first application Halliburn has brought forward in this case.

Following sentencing submissions on April 30, Halliburn informed the court she was making an application for McParland to recuse herself from the case.

She argued McParland cried during a victim impact statement and that the judge displayed an “overall tone of bias” against her client. On Aug. 17, McParland rejected the application.

In court Thursday, Halliburn also indicated she was considering making an application with respect to Crown’s abuse of power, but that it depended on the application to withdraw the plea.