Rechercher sur ce blogue

Aucun message portant le libellé Charte - Article 9. Afficher tous les messages
Aucun message portant le libellé Charte - Article 9. Afficher tous les messages

dimanche 29 juin 2025

Lorsqu'un accusé allègue que la fouille incidente à son arrestation est illégale, il appartient à la poursuite de démontrer la légalité de l'arrestation

R. v. Desilva, 2022 ONCA 879

Lien vers la décision


[55]      While ordinarily a claimant has the burden to prove that there has been an unlawful arrest, where the claimant has brought an overlapping challenge against the warrantless search incident to arrest, the Crown bears the burden to show that the predicate arrest was lawful: R. v. Gerson-Foster2019 ONCA 405, 437 C.R.R. (2d) 193, at para. 75. This is to avoid conflicting burdens on the same issue because warrantless searches are presumptively unlawful and the Crown ordinarily bears the burden to show their lawfulness: R. v. Fearon2014 SCC 77, [2014] 3 S.C.R. 621, at para. 87.

mardi 24 juin 2025

La Couronne supporte toujours le fardeau de justifier d'une arrestation sans mandat

R v S (WEQ), 2018 MBCA 106 

Lien ver la décision


[14]                     When an accused challenges the validity of a warrantless arrest, the burden is on the Crown to show that the arrest was made in accordance with section 495(1) of the Code.

[15]                     Section 495(1) of the Code states as follows:

 

Arrest without warrant by peace officer

(1) A peace officer may arrest without warrant

 

(a) a person who has committed an indictable offence or who, on reasonable grounds, he believes has committed or is about to commit an indictable offence;

 

(b) a person whom he finds committing a criminal offence; or

 

(c) a person in respect of whom he has reasonable grounds to believe that a warrant of arrest or committal, in any form set out in Part XXVIII in relation thereto, is in force within the territorial jurisdiction in which the person is found.

 

[16]                     In The Queen v Biron1975 CanLII 13 (SCC)[1976] 2 SCR 56, Martland J, for the majority of the Supreme Court of Canada, considered sections 495(1)(a) and (b) (then sections 450(1)(a) and (b)), and stated (at pp 71-72):

 

Paragraph (a) of s. 450(1) permits a peace officer to arrest without a warrant:

 

(a)  a person who has committed an indictable offence or who, on reasonable and probable grounds, he believes has committed or is about to commit an indictable offence,

 

This paragraph, limited in its application to indictable offences, deals with the situation in which an offence has already been committed or is expected to be committed.  The peace officer is not present at its commission.  He may have to rely upon information received from others.  The paragraph therefore enables him to act on his belief, if based on reasonable and probable grounds.

 

Paragraph (b) applies in relation to any criminal offence and it deals with the situation in which the peace officer himself finds an offence being committed.  His power to arrest is based upon his own observation.  Because it is based on his own discovery of an offence actually being committed there is no reason to refer to a belief based upon reasonable and probable grounds.

 

[17]                     Subsequent appellate case law has added to and clarified the statements made in Biron.  For example, in Regina v Stevens (1976), 1976 CanLII 1411 (NS CA)33 CCC (2d) 429 (NSSC (AD)), MacDonald JA, for the Court, considered Biron and stated (at p 434):

 

The requirement of reasonable and probable grounds relates only to arrest without warrant in indictable offences (s. 450(1)(a)) [now s. 495(1)(a)] not to summary conviction offences such as creating a disturbance.  In order to arrest a person without a warrant for a summary conviction offence it is not sufficient for the arresting officer to show that he had reasonable and probable grounds to believe such offence had been, or was about to be, committed; rather, he must go further and show that he found a situation in which a person was apparently committing an offence.

En cas d'arrestation sans mandat, il appartient à l'État de démontrer que l'arrestation est raisonnable selon la balance des probabilités

R. v. White, 2022 NSCA 61 

Lien vers la décision


[22]         The judge observed that s. 495(1)(a) of the Criminal Code requires that on a warrantless arrest the police must have reasonable grounds to believe that the person has committed or is about to commit an indictable offence.  There is a subjective and objective component when establishing reasonable grounds to arrest without a warrant.  The burden is on the Crown to show that on a balance of probabilities, a warrantless arrest was reasonable.  All the circumstances must be considered.  The judge noted the circumstances in this case included:

[43]      (a)        the police attended the parking lot to investigate a motor vehicle accident involving two vehicles – a dark or navy blue Volkswagen Jetta and a second vehicle that had fled the scene, hitting a female pedestrian as it fled;

            (b)        when officers arrived on scene, they began the investigation into the motor vehicle accident;

            (c)        Cst. McCully went to speak with the female pedestrian who had been struck by the fleeing vehicle;

            (d)      Cst. MacNeil spoke with Decoda White, Nathaniel White and Mariam Al Husseini who were in the Vokswagen [sic] vehicle in the parking lot;

            (e)        No details were provided by Decoda White, Nathaniel White or Mariam Al Husseini regarding the type or colour of the other vehicle that had fled the scene;

            (f)        Ms. Al Husseini provided the vehicle paperwork to Cst. MacNeil;

            (g)        Cst. MacNeil returned to his vehicle to begin the report on the motor vehicle accident. While in his vehicle, Cst. MacNeil received a telephone call from Staff Sgt. Perry Astephen and asked to contact Sgt. Sheppard,who had information that a firearm was present;

            (h)        Cst. MacNeil telephoned Sgt. Sheppard and was told that Sgt. Sheppard had received information from a confidential source that Decoda White was seen with a firearm in the vehicle. By that time, the paramedic had arrived to attend to the female pedestrian;

            (i)         Mariam Al Husseini was in the ambulance. Decoda White was seated in the front passenger seat of the Volkswagen with the door open and his feet outside of the vehicle, on the ground. Nathaniel White was seated in the back seat of the Volkswagen with the door open and his feet outside of the vehicle, on the ground;

            (j)         There was no firearm observed in plain view by Cst. MacNeil and there was no evidence of illicit activities.

mardi 17 juin 2025

L'implication générale d'un individu avec la criminalité organisée n'est pas une assise permettant aux policiers de le détenir à des fins d'enquête, vu qu'il n'est soupçonné d'un crime précis

R v Sabiston, 2023 SKCA 105

Lien vers la décision


[39]           Here, the officers testified only to a general involvement of Mr. Sabiston with gang criminality. They did not articulate any other suspected offence or criminal behaviour, upon which to particularize their suspicion. The only offence tethered to Cst. Ethier’s subjective belief was possession of stolen property. While I acknowledge that the standard of reasonable suspicion deals with possibilities, rather than probabilities of a crime being committed (Chehil at para 27), a sufficient nexus is still required between a reasonable suspicion and a “particular crime” (Mann at paras 34 and 45). There is no such nexus here. The fact that Mr. Sabiston was on a weapons prohibition and a gang member does not reasonably tie Cst. Ethier’s subjective belief to a stolen property offence. The officers did not testify to having knowledge of Mr. Sabiston’s criminal record, beyond an awareness that he was on a weapons prohibition. They did not give evidence that Mr. Sabiston had a history of property or theft related criminality. There was no report on the date in question that he was involved in such criminality.

vendredi 13 juin 2025

La fouille effectuée lors d'une détention aux fins d'enquête doit l'être à des fins de sécurité

R v McKenzie, 2022 MBCA 3

Lien vers la décision


[31]                     Issues as to detention and search are analytically distinct (see MacKenzie at para 36).

[32]                     In Mann, the Supreme Court recognized that, based on the Waterfield framework, police have a warrantless search power at common law incident to a lawful investigative detention (see paras 36-44).  A police officer may conduct a protective pat-down search for weapons incident to an investigative detention where the officer has reasonable grounds to believe that his or her safety or that of others is at risk (see Mann at para 40; and Clayton at paras 29-30). This search power is more circumscribed than the common law search power that police have incident to a lawful arrest (see Mann at paras 37, 45).

[33]                     A protective search incident to an investigative detention does not arise as a matter of course.  The court must be satisfied that the officer’s decision to search was “reasonably necessary in light of the totality of the circumstances” (Mann at para 40).  Such searches “must be grounded in objectively discernible facts to prevent ‘fishing expeditions’ on the basis of irrelevant or discriminatory factors” (at para 43).  A protective search “cannot be justified on the basis of a vague or non-existent concern for safety, nor can the search be premised upon hunches or mere intuition” (at para 40).

[34]                     The conduct of the protective search “must also be confined in scope to an intrusion reasonably designed to locate weapons” (at para 41) and must be otherwise reasonably conducted (see para 45).

[35]                     The language in Mann as to the threshold for this warrantless search power was, with respect, imprecise.  In several places in the decision, the standard for a protective search was described as “reasonable grounds” that the safety of the officer or others is at risk (at paras 40, 43, 45).  Yet, in the result, the Court said the initial pat-down search of the detainee in Mann was justified because there was “a logical possibility that the [detainee], suspected on reasonable grounds of having recently committed a break-and-enter, was in possession of break-and-enter tools, which could be used as weapons” (at para 48) (emphasis added).  Of some significance is the fact that the American case law relied on in Mann to justify the constitutionality of a search incident to an investigative detention is premised on the basis of the reasonable suspicion standard, not the higher standard of reasonable grounds (see R v Le2014 ONSC 2033 at para 99, aff’d 2018 ONCA 56, rev’d on other grounds 2019 SCC 34).

[36]                     Post-Mann, the language of the Supreme Court as to the legal threshold to conduct a protective search for a weapon incident to a lawful investigative detention was interpreted to be one of reasonable suspicion of a safety risk posed by the detainee (see R v Crocker2009 BCCA 388 at para 72R v Atkins2013 ONCA 586 at para 15Clayton at paras 46, 48; and Chehil at para 23).  As noted in Le, it would be illogical to have a higher standard (see paras 99-100).

[37]                     In MacDonald, the Supreme Court dealt with the question of a warrantless safety search pursuant to common law police powers outside the context of an investigative detention or an arrest.  The Court was divided as to what was the legal threshold required to conduct a safety search.  In R v Peterkin2015 ONCA 8, Watt JA sketched out the judicial disagreement in the Supreme Court this way (at paras 53-54):

 

Citing Mann at paragraphs 40 and 45, a majority of the court concluded safety searches are authorized by law only if the officer believes on reasonable grounds his or her safety is at stake and that, as a result, it was necessary to conduct a search:  MacDonald, at para. 41.

 

A minority of the court concurred in the result (that the safety search was justified), but held the majority had been unfaithful to the teachings of Mann and the subsequent case law by positing a new standard of reasonable grounds to believe a person was armed and dangerous rather than reasonable grounds to suspect such was the case:  MacDonald, at paras. 66, 77.  The minority maintained that although Mann employed the language of “reasonable grounds to believe”, pairing this language with the concept of safety being “at risk” inherently built in the standard of a possibility:  MacDonald, at para. 69.  By using the language of reasonable grounds to believe a person is armed or dangerous (at paras. 39, 42), and reasonable belief in an imminent threat to safety (at paras. 40, 43-44), the majority replaced what was in essence a reasonable suspicion standard with one of reasonable belief:  MacDonald, at paras. 66-71.

 

[footnote omitted]

 

[38]                     There are differing schools of thought that have arisen post-MacDonald regarding the impact of the majority decision on warrantless common law police powers to search.

[39]                     One view is the majority’s reasoning in MacDonald applies only to free-standing safety searches and does not apply to other contexts (see Peterkin at para 59R v Smith2019 SKCA 126 at paras 13-15; and R v Stairs2020 ONCA 678 at paras 54-55).

[40]                     Another view is the minority in MacDonald was incorrect; the majority in MacDonald did not “recalibrate the test for lawful police safety searches from the traditional ‘reasonable suspicion’ standard” (R v Webber2019 BCCA 208 at para 65; and see R v McGuffie2016 ONCA 365 at para 52); all that happened was the majority in MacDonald used the same unclear language that was used in Mann.  However, a different perspective, that the minority in MacDonald was correct as to the test for lawful common law police searches being recalibrated by the majority, was reached in R v Del Corro2019 ABCA 156 at para 49.

[41]                     The trial judge, referring to Mann, stated that, in order to conduct a valid search incident to an investigative detention, there must be “reasonable grounds for the police to believe their safety is at risk” (at para 38; see also para 40).  Although the trial judge also cited MacDonald, she did not address its broad meaning as to the relevant standard for warrantless common law police powers to search, and that legal issue was not argued before her.  Nor was that issue raised before this Court.  As will be explained, it is not necessary for this Court to address the legal debate raised by MacDonald to decide this appeal.  It can be left for another day.

[42]                     What is not controversial is that a protective search incident to a lawful investigative detention that is carried out in conformity with common law police powers and otherwise in a reasonable manner is not an unreasonable search or seizure for the purposes of section 8 of the Charter (see Mann at para 44; and Clayton at para 20).

La formation et l’expérience d’un agent de police peuvent jouer un rôle important lorsqu’il s’agit de déterminer si la norme des soupçons raisonnables a été respectée

R. c. MacKenzie, 2013 CSC 50

Lien vers la décision


[62]                          La formation et l’expérience d’un agent de police peuvent jouer un rôle important lorsqu’il s’agit de déterminer si la norme des soupçons raisonnables a été respectée.  Les agents de police sont formés pour détecter les activités criminelles.  C’est leur travail.  Ils le font quotidiennement.  C’est pourquoi [traduction] « un fait ou un aspect insignifiant aux yeux du profane peut parfois se révéler très important à ceux d’un agent de police » (Yeh, par. 53).  Ce qu’ils perçoivent par la vue ou l’ouïe, les mouvements, le langage corporel et les types de comportement, notamment, font partie du bagage des agents de police que les tribunaux devraient prendre en considération pour déterminer si leurs témoignages, dans une affaire donnée, permettent d’établir que le seuil des soupçons raisonnables avait été atteint. 

[63]                          Par conséquent, pour déterminer si l’existence de soupçons raisonnables a été prouvée, il faut procéder à l’analyse du caractère objectivement raisonnable du point de vue d’une personne raisonnable [traduction] « mise à la place de l’agent de police » (R. c. Tran2007 BCCA 491, 247 B.C.A.C. 109, par. 12; voir également R. c. Whyte2011 ONCA 24, 272 O.A.C. 317, par. 31).

[64]                          Cela ne veut pas dire pour autant que les tribunaux doivent accepter sans réserve la formation et l’expérience des policiers.  Comme le fait remarquer ma collègue, la juge Karakatsanis, dans Chehil, « l’intuition fondée sur l’expérience du policier [ne] suffira [pas] » et les tribunaux ne sont pas tenus à la déférence à l’égard du point de vue d’un agent de police sur les circonstances du fait de sa formation ou de son expérience sur le terrain (par. 47).  Les soupçons raisonnables constituent après tout une norme objective qui doit résister à un examen indépendant.

Le dédommagement à la victime doit toujours être envisagé lors de la détermination de la peine

Une agression sexuelle peut être commise même en l’absence d’un contact physique proprement dit, car la menace ou la tentative d'employer la force suffit pour entraîner la culpabilité de l'accusé

R. v. Edgar, 2016 ONCA 120  Lien vers la décision [ 10 ]        To commit a sexual assault, it was not necessary for the appellant to touch ...