Judge says 44 months is unreasonable delay
Queen’s Bench Justice Robert Dewar has set an accused man free because the delay for a trial was excessive.
Under a Supreme court decision in July of 2016 delays to trial in excess of 30 months is considered unreasonable.
The man had been accused of on-going sexual assaults on a young girl that had occurred between 1997 and 2003. According to the victim the assaults began when she was 6 years old.
When police investigated it was decided that charges would be pursued and in 2007 an arrest warrant was sought. For some reason the file was “lost” and it wasn’t until 2013 when another officer was searching police files on a different matter relating to the accused that the case came to light once again.
Under advice from the crown charges were approved and a warrant was issued in 2013 for sexual assault, sexual interference, invitation to sexual touching and uttering death threats.
Once again the file was “lost” and it wasn’t until late winter of 2015 that the man was arrested after he was involved in an incident that caused the RCMP to run his name through their computer.
The man was slated to stand trial in April of 2017 but last September his lawyers filed a motion complaining of the delay. The judge agreed that that delay was not reasonable and that it exceeded the 30 months from charges being laid to trial as set out by the Supreme Court of Canada.
This is the first time an accused has had their charges tossed out in Manitoba since the Supreme Court ruling last summer.
-News4 Staff-