Murder trial back on after being stayed for delays
OTTAWA • Ontario’s highest court ruled an alleged killer must stand trial for first-degree murder in Ottawa even though it took four years for his case to go to a jury.
In a closely watched decision issued Thursday, the Court of Appeal for Ontario reinstated murder charges against former soldier Adam Picard, ruling the delays in his case fell within exceptions set down by the Supreme Court in R. v. Jordan.
“In my view, the trial judge erred in her application of the transitional exceptional circumstance under Jordan,” Justice Paul Rouleau said in writing for the three-member appeal panel.
The court overturned the judge’s decision to toss out the murder case on the eve of Picard’s six-week trial.
Last November, Ontario Superior Court Justice Julianne Parfett stunned an Ottawa courtroom by staying murder charges against Picard because of unreasonable delay as defined by the Supreme Court.
In July 2016, in R. v. Jordan, the Supreme Court said even the most serious criminal cases must be concluded within 30 months of charges being laid.
But Ontario’s appeal court disagreed with Parfett’s interpretation of Jordan. The three-member panel said the case deserved more latitude since it predated the high court’s imposition of new trial delay limits, and would have been acceptable under the legal regime in place at the time of Picard’s arrest.
Picard had been held in custody for four years awaiting trial. He walked out of court a free man 47 months after he was arrested on Dec. 12, 2012 in connection with the death of Fouad Nayel.
The 28-year-old construction worker had been missing for five months when his decomposed remains were discovered in a wooded area near Calabogie, Ont., in November 2012.
Before his disappearance, he told his father, Amine, he was driving to Petawawa and would be back with Chinese food to celebrate Father’s Day.
After being released, Picard maintained his innocence, saying: “I’m relieved that is over and I would just like to get back to my life.”
Nayel’s father said the family’s hearts had been ripped out.
“If a person is found innocent by his peers so be it,” Amine Nayel said. “I believe in our system, but not now. The so-called system is broken. What happened to us is a grave mistake.”
The Crown appealed the decision to stay the first-degree murder charges, arguing the judge mischaracterized the nature of the delays and failed to consider the case’s complexity.
In the Jordan decision and in two subsequent rulings, the Supreme Court established guidelines for courts to follow when considering whether a criminal case has taken too long to reach trial.
The rulings recognize the strict timelines should not always be applied in cases that originated before the Jordan ruling.
The Supreme Court has allowed lower courts a transition period to adjust to the new limits. Judges can consider the seriousness of an offence, the complexity of a case and the court backlogs faced by a jurisdiction in deciding whether delays are unreasonable.
The high court said judges must also consider whether the delays would be considered unreasonable under the legal framework that existed before the Jordan ruling.
Ontario judges stayed 77 criminal cases in the first eights months after the Supreme Court imposed new limits on trial delays. They also rejected more than 125 stay applications.
The Picard case was the only case in which murder charges had been stayed in Ontario.