Delay dashes charges against repeat sex offender

A repeat sex offender accused of assaults in Alberta and B.C. will not be tried for a heinous New Westminster attack on a passenger while he was a bus driver seven years ago.

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Michael Tammen, appointed in June, said the delay in prosecuting Oliver James Doherty, who has been in jail since May 2011 for the Alberta charges, doomed the B.C. case from the outset.

There was a “total breakdown” in communication between the provinces, he found, and the Crown’s missteps, inaction and conduct fell “well below that which is expected of reasonably diligent counsel.”

“Although the logistical details of keeping two sets of serious charges on the proverbial rails in different provinces would not have been simple, they would not have been particularly complex or onerous,” Tammen wrote in the decision, released Friday.

“The two court jurisdictions are separated by the Rocky Mountains, not the Atlantic Ocean. There is a one-hour time difference. Flight times between Edmonton and Vancouver are less than two hours.”

The Alberta assaults were so barbaric that prosecutors considered a dangerous offender application, the justice noted, and Doherty received a sentence of 11 years after credit for time served, commencing June 6, 2014.

Tammen stayed the New West charges, saying the proceedings had exceeded the strict deadlines established by the Supreme Court of Canada in a 2016 decision known as R vs. Jordan.

“We have also failed the complainant and the general public,” the judge wrote. “The complainant should never have been made to wait seven years for this case to get to trial. The public expects, and rightly so, that a crime such as that alleged here will reach conclusion in a fraction of the time this case has taken.”

Doherty was charged with sexual assault, unlawful confinement and uttering threats after a woman was attacked Feb. 7, 2010, in New Westminster.

“The allegations are extremely serious, involving non-consensual, unprotected oral and vaginal sex, accompanied by threats and confinement of the complainant on a bus which the accused was operating,” Tammen said.

Police matched the resulting DNA profile to an unidentified person in three unsolved 2004 Alberta sexual offences.

A year later, Doherty’s DNA was identified during the investigation of a January 2011 sex assault in Edmonton. That tied him to the earlier Alberta and New Westminster offences.

On May 25, 2011, Edmonton police charged him with the four separate Alberta incidents. But New Westminster police only learned Doherty was in custody on Oct. 12 and the same day advised the B.C. Crown counsel who handled the case until December 2016.

She had approved charges only a week earlier and expressed hope that Doherty would plead guilty in B.C. because of the Alberta charges.

Over the years, Tammen said, there were multiple opportunities for her to have arranged a first appearance and commence prosecution on the B.C. charges.

The Alberta Crown didn’t bother to let B.C. know when Doherty was sentenced in 2014. It was not until Doherty appeared by video link on April 20, 2016, that the B.C. warrant for his arrest was considered executed.

The time from date of charge to his first appearance in 2016 was deemed in excess of 54 months.

The public expects … a crime such as that alleged here will reach conclusion in a fraction of the time this case has taken.