R. v. Sheppard, 2025 SCC 29: Friesen applies to historical sexual abuse against children. Sentences for historical offences are properly determined in accordance with the sentencing regimes and societal perspectives that prevail at the time of sentencing decisions.scc-csc.ca/scc-csc/scc-...

R. v. G.H., 2025 ONCA 667 at para. 9: The 60-day re-election deadline is the first OCJ trial date set by the court and is not limited to the stage of the trial in which evidence is heard. Rescheduling only pushes the deadline forward but not back. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Pahal, 2025 ONCA 668 at para 75: To avoid crossing the line & effecting a detention while executing a search warrant, police officers should act “solely to ensure the integrity of the search”. If they exceed, they must provide occupants with 10(b) coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Ranu, 2025 ONCA 663: My thoughts. There is a difference between production (s. 278.1) and persuasion. D could've maybe crossed that the Crown's failure, through the C, to produce these "many more" messages shows fabrication. ... coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Arapakota, 2025 ONCA 660: s. 3(1)(a) of the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act does not require that a person offering or making a payment to a foreign official foresaw the precise act or omission they would seek from the official in return coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Bowie, 2025 ONCA 661 at para 27: Justice Trotter dismisses a bail pending appeal application from a convicted criminal lawyer through the public safety arm of the Oland test. This is rare. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

unintentionally traded*

R. v. K.D., 2025 ONCA 639: 11(b) dismissal overturned and a stay issued. This case shows how broken our s. 11(b) case law is in Ontario. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. J.W., 2025 ONCA 63: Important case for sexual assault prosecutions. Paciocco JA reins in ARJD and fully interprets DD. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. De Jesus Carrasco, 2025 ONCA 628 at para. 23: A judge can't rely upon the testimonial demeanour of a complainant to gauge her character & then infer based on her character that she isn't the type who would have acted in a certain way coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Hernandez-Viera, 2025 ONCA 626 at para 7: Readings captured by measuring devices in common usage can be treated as some evidence of what they display, where there is a factual foundation for finding the measurements they display to be reliable. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Jiang, 2025 ONCA 624 at para. 28: After a re-trial, a sentencing judge should take into account the fitness of the original sentence as an important consideration or precedent but is not bound to follow it. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Mohamed, 2025 ONCA 611: Basically, common intention can never be a route to liability for a planned and deliberate first degree murder. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Nguyen, 2025 ONCA 609: In the context of investigating a tip about a stash house, it's not that difficult to see, actually. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Swaine, 2025 ONCA 614 at para 39: Individual judges cannot waive judicial immunity. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Dos Santos, 2025 ONCA 598: Mistrials do not reset the Jordan clock. An application judge can account for it if the Crown proves both branches of the discrete exceptional circumstance test. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Storey, 2025 ONCA 599 at para. 66: At sentencing, don't conflate NCR with moral blameworthiness. An offender's cognitive challenges can be mitigating even if the challenges don't rise to the NCR level. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. M.F., 2025 ONCA 596 at para 27: The Court leaves for another day the issue of whether sexual interference is a “violent offence” within the meaning of s. 39(1)(a) of the YCJA coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. I.M., 2025 SCC 23 at para 9: If the Crown wishes to have a youth sentenced as an adult, it must rebut the presumption of diminished moral blameworthiness beyond a reasonable doubt. This is a statutory and *constitutional* requirement. decisions.scc-csc.ca/scc-csc/scc-...

R. v. Sels, 2025 ONCA 592 at para 21: New murder trial because the judge failed to instruct the jury on the relevance of group aggression to determining whether an act of purported self-defence was reasonable. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Bharwani, 2025 SCC 26 at para 6: Fitness to stand trial does not require an accused to make decisions in their best interests. decisions.scc-csc.ca/scc-csc/scc-...

R. v. Pierre, 2025 ONCA 589 at para 60: The Court overturns a murder conviction entered by their now-colleague. The jury instruction failed to fully explain what the after-the-fact conduct could not do: inform the mens rea generally. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. D.B., 2025 ONCA 577 at para 19: Failing to meaningfully engage with the collateral consequences of family separation is an error in principle. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Sturgeon, 2025 ONCA 572: Monahan J.A. fails to explain whether the misapprehension of evidence was inessential to the conviction, or whether the TJ just had other reasons to convict. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. G.G., 2025 ONCA 574 at para. 72: In a sexual assault prosecution, testimony will rarely, if ever, narrow the time period alleged. The accused has a right to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Leclaire, 2025 ONSC 4203 (CanLII): Justice Kathy Jalali refused to impose a mandatory minimum prison sentence. The appeal court (SCJ) basically called this judicial misconduct. canlii.ca/t/kdntc

R. v. Martin, 2025 ONCA 317 at para 27: The “clearly unwarranted” test in a s. 680 bail review asks whether the original bail decision, when considered in its proper legal and factual context, is one that no reasonable judge could have made. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Varennes, 2025 SCC 22: A Superior Court can review the Crown's decision whether to consent to a judge‑alone trial under s. 473(1) of the Criminal Code in two ways: 1️⃣For abuse of process 2️⃣Under the Charter for a s. 24(1) remedy canlii.ca/t/kd4t5

Just to be clear: MacPherson JA flipped from the then-majority opinion to the dissent.

R. v. U.P., 2025 ONCA 567: I have two issues with the Court's treatment of the TJ's failure to provide a PCS instruction. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Ouedraogo, 2025 ONCA 566 at para 60: A sentencing judge cannot recommend phallometric testing in a LTSO. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Rashed, 2025 ONCA 515 at para 40: Wilful blindness requires that the D subjectively strongly suspects that the consequence has happened AND deliberately chooses not to inquire further because the D subjectively strongly suspects that inquiring will give knowledge canlii.ca/t/kd8lg%3E

R. v. Osman, 2025 ONCA 516: Decision of the year from Copeland J.A. A person charged with being an accessory after the fact to murder can be liable for being an accessory after the fact to an included offence to murder. canlii.ca/t/kd8lf

R. v. Ranatunga, 2025 ONCA 557: In a 2-1 split, Fairburn ACJO and MacPherson JA uphold a judge's conditional sentence for a penetrative sexual assault. It appears MacPherson JA flipped at a late stage from the majority to the dissent. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Gilmore, 2025 ONCA 517 at para. 47, citing Easterbrook, 2022 ONCJ 647, at paras. 43-44, per @brockbjones.bsky.social: It is an aggravating sentencing factor that an assault was committed on public transit. In this case, it was the TTC subway. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Smoke, 2025 ONCA 519 at paras. 40-43: I think the court possibly made an academic error. The issue is whether the jury misunderstood the law. The Court possibly confuses this with whether the jury's misunderstanding was prejudicial. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Griffiths, 2025 ONCA 511, citing in R. v. Lu, 2022 ONSC 1918, at para. 58, per Di Luca J.: A person can be remorseful for having committed an offence while nonetheless exercising their constitutional right to a trial. The two are not incompatible. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Beak, 2025 ONCA 506 at para. 63: In a trial with multiple accused, one accused does not have a right to know the position of his co-accused in advance of putting on his own defence. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. R.V.A., 2025 ONCA 501 at paras. 17-18: The D's failure to deny raping the C when accused was admissible as an adoptive admission. The Court cautions that this evidence must be approached with great care bc of the potential for inaccuracy. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Thompson, 2025 ONCA 500: Important case on the right to counsel. A detainee should be given another opportunity to speak with a lawyer when they are going to be strip searched incident to arrest. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Singh, 2025 ONCA 498 at para 1: A judge cannot direct a verdict of guilt in a jury trial. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Zock, 2025 ONCA 483: Ineffective assistance of counsel warrants a new sexual assault trial because the D was never told by trial counsel that he had a right to a jury trial & the election was made without the appellant’s instruction. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Kim, 2025 ONCA 478: Where a qualified technician states that the system calibration check was conducted against an alcohol standard that was certified by an analyst, that is evidence that the alcohol standard was certified by an analyst. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

Drover v. Canada (Attorney General), 2025 ONCA 468: In a case probably headed to the Supreme Court of Canada, a 2-1 majority finds that there is a s. 7 Charter right to decide where to live, constrained by maintaining personal autonomy and dignity. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Singh, 2025 ONCA 460 at para 11: A judge cannot reason that as a matter of logic and common sense, one would expect a sexual abuse victim to demonstrate behaviour consistent with that abuse or change behaviour such as avoiding the perpetrator. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Woods, 2025 ONCA 433 at para 15: It is callous and inaccurate to equate the extreme restrictions on detainees’ liberty during prolonged lockdowns with the restrictions on the activities of those not in jail during the COVID-19 pandemic. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Othman, 2025 ONCA 449 at paras 61-62: The law of when the defence of honest but mistaken belief in communicated consent will not be considered. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

R. v. Kinamore, 2025 SCC 19: The Supreme Court attempts to even the ledger on 276/Seaboyer/sexual history evidence. The Crown must bring an application that mirrors s. 276's procedural requirements to introduce this evidence. [1/5] decisions.scc-csc.ca/scc-csc/scc-...

R. v. Chiarelli, 2025 ONCA 428: It’s an error for the judge to admit the police officers’ opinion evidence that the items they found in the car were consistent with drug trafficking or, at least, to not give a limiting instruction regarding those items. coadecisions.ontariocourts.ca/coa/coa/en/i...

Congratulations to Marina Elias on her appointment to the OCJ! Marina is brilliant, kind, and compassionate. She is going to be an excellent judge. Congratulations as well to Sean Ellacot and former defence counsel Sean Robichaud! news.ontario.ca/en/bulletin/...