R. v. Jenkins, 2024 ONCA 533
[3] I would allow the appeal and order a new trial. The trial judge erred in allowing the five surveillance officers to give the impugned opinion evidence. The Crown did not seek to qualify the five officers as experts. Thus, they could not give expert opinion evidence. In any event, the form of the evidence was impermissible even had they been qualified as experts. Nor was the opinion evidence of the five officers within the scope of lay opinion evidence permitted under the principles enunciated in Graat v. The Queen, 1982 CanLII 33 (SCC), [1982] 2 S.C.R. 819. Given the prominence of the opinion evidence in the trial and the risk of misuse of improperly tendered opinion evidence in a jury trial, I would not apply the curative proviso.
[20] In Nguyen, this court considered the same type of evidence from an officer who was not qualified as an expert to give opinion evidence. After giving evidence about surveillance observations of Mr. Nguyen, the officer testified that in his opinion what he had observed – one male picking up or dropping property off to another male – was “consistent with drug-related activity.”
[21] This court held that the trial judge in Nguyen erred in admitting the officer’s opinion evidence. The Court started with the well-established proposition that opinion evidence is presumptively inadmissible: Nguyen at para. 48, citing R. v. D.(D.), 2000 SCC 43, [2000] 2 S.C.R. 275, at para. 49. The opinion evidence was improperly admitted in Nguyen because it did not satisfy the admissibility requirements for either expert opinion evidence or lay opinion evidence.
[22] In relation to expert opinion evidence, there were two problems in Nguyen. First, the Crown had not established the officer’s expertise to offer the opinion he provided. Second, the opinion provided by the officer did not meet the necessity requirement for admissibility of expert evidence. The opinion that the conduct of picking up or dropping off property between two people “was consistent with drug-related activity” was not a matter that non-experts – a trier of fact – are unlikely to form a correct judgment about: see also R. v. Gill, 2017 ONSC 3558, at paras. 41-44, per Fairburn J., as she then was.
[23] This court further held that the officer’s opinion evidence – that the conduct observed was consistent with drug trafficking – did not fall within the scope of lay opinion evidence: Nguyen, at para. 53. Lay opinion evidence is admissible where a witness is “merely giving a compendious statement of facts that are too subtle or complicated to narrate separately and distinctly”: Graat, at p. 841. Where a surveillance officer gives evidence about their observations of a suspect (properly admissible), they can relate the evidence of the factual observations they made without providing the further opinion evidence that the conduct observed is consistent with drug trafficking: see also Gill, at paras 43-44.
[25] This was an error. The evidence of the five surveillance officers should have been limited to their observations of the appellant during the surveillance (and of the people he was with, to the extent it was relevant).
[26] The opinion evidence given by the five surveillance officers in this case is indistinguishable from the opinion evidence which this court found to be inadmissible in Nguyen.
[27] First, the Crown did not seek to qualify the five surveillance officers as experts on the indicia of drug trafficking.
[28] Second, the conclusory opinion evidence given by each of the five officers was not necessary for the jury to form a correct judgment about the evidence. The jury was capable of assessing the factual observations described by the officers. In particular, the jury was capable of weighing the shortness of the appellant’s interactions with third parties as a factor that may, in the context of the evidence as a whole, be probative of drug trafficking transactions.
[29] Third, the conclusory opinion that the conduct observed was, or was consistent with, drug trafficking was not within the scope of lay opinion evidence. The jury could understand, and the officers could convey, the factual observations of the appellant’s conduct during the surveillance without the further opinion that the officers believed that the conduct was, or was consistent with, drug trafficking.
[30] To be clear, I am not suggesting that expert opinion evidence could not be led on the issue of indicia of trafficking if a trial judge was satisfied that it met the White Burgess admissibility criteria: White Burgess Langille Inman v. Abbott and Haliburton Co., 2015 SCC 23, [2015] 2 S.C.R. 182. This court and the Supreme Court have recognized that expert opinion evidence may be tendered on issues related to drug trafficking, such as “chains of distribution, distribution routes, means of transportation, methods of concealment, packaging, value, cost and profit margins”, where the evidence is based on specialized knowledge outside the knowledge of a lay trier of fact: R. v. Sekhon, 2014 SCC 15, [2014] 1 S.C.R. 272, at para. 18; Nguyen, at para. 52.[3]
[31] I would also emphasize that where opinion evidence is tendered on issues related to drug trafficking, it must be limited to providing the jury with evidence in general terms about the area of expertise (for example, drug pricing; trafficking quantities; methods of drug trafficking), which they may consider and, if they accept it, apply as part of their fact finding to decide what inferences or conclusions to draw from other evidence (for example, surveillance evidence). Expert opinion may not extend to conclusions or inferences to be drawn about the accused’s conduct. The inference-drawing process is part of the jury’s fact-finding role, and not the province of the expert witness. Thus, an expert providing opinion evidence about indicia of drug trafficking may not opine that the particular acts of the accused were drug trafficking or were consistent with drug trafficking. Those questions are for the trier of fact: R. v. Abbey (2009), 2009 ONCA 624 (CanLII), 97 O.R. (3d) 330 (C.A.), at paras. 30-31, 98-102; Gill, at para. 44; Sekhon, at paras. 46 and 50; Nguyen, at paras. 50-51; David M. Paciocco, Palma Paciocco & Lee Stuesser, The Law of Evidence, 8th ed. (Toronto: Irwin Law, 2020), at p. 234.