Case information

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Case summaries are prepared by the Office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court of Canada (Law Branch). Please note that summaries are not provided to the Judges of the Court. They are placed on the Court file and website for information purposes only.

The Court of Appeal set out the following facts. The Appellant, Sameer Mapara, George Wasfi and Shane Kelly Shoemaker were jointly charged with the first degree murder of Vikash Chand. The victim was shot seven times in Mapara’s car lot while changing a licence plate on the Appellant’s car.

The Crown entered into evidence the Appellant’s telephone calls tapped under eleven successive wire tap authorizations associated with an unrelated drug investigation. The evidence crucial to the Crown’s case was intercepted under the sixth and seventh authorizations. The Appellant was first named in the third authorization based in part on evidence gathered under the second authorization.
The affidavits in support of the authorizations contained a paragraph declaring the intention of the police to monitor cell phones first in “manual mode” (selective monitoring by way of voice identification) for seven consecutive days and thereafter in “automatic mode” if it appeared that a target was a primary user of that phone. In automatic mode, a cellular telephone is monitored on an automatic basis without prior voice identification. There was no provision in the authorizations to make the change from manual to automatic mode. The Appellant and Mapara sought to exclude the wiretap evidence based upon ss. 8 and 24(2) of the Charter. On a voir dire, the trial judge rejected their application.

At the end of the Crown’s case, Wasfi and the Appellant applied for severance. The Appellant argued that Shoemaker’s evidence would tend to exculpate him. Shoemaker was not a compellable witness in the joint trial, but would have been compellable in a separate trial. The trial judge granted severance to Wasfi, but not the Appellant. The Appellant and Mapara testified in their defence. Shoemaker did not, but a statement made by Shoemaker to the police was admitted into evidence. The Appellant testified that the intercepted telephone calls referred to a marijuana deal and, in two calls, he realized that Wasfi was referring to a contract killing but he had said he was not interested in becoming involved. He said that he thought the money he paid to Binahmad was for the marijuana deal.

The Appellant, Shoemaker and Mapara were convicted by the jury of first degree murder. The Appellant and Mapara appealed. One of the Appellant’s grounds for appeal was the trial judge’s refusal to grant a severance. In the appeal proceedings, the Appellant sought to enter fresh evidence in the form of an affidavit (a will-say statement) by Shoemaker. The convictions were upheld by the Court of Appeal. Before judgment was entered on the appeal, the Appellant sought leave to re-open the appeal on the issue of severance. The Court of Appeal heard and dismissed the application to re-open the appeal.