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.

Criminal Law – Party liability – Aiding and abetting – Charge to Jury – Use of out-of-court statements – Jury's permissible use of evidence of past acts of abuse – Court of Appeal's duty to give reasons for dismissing grounds for appeal – Scope of s. 11 of Canada Evidence Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-5 – Whether aiding or abetting must have a causal effect of assisting or encouraging the perpetrator's offence for purposes of party liability – Whether an omission, even in the face of a legal duty, can give rise to aiding or abetting – Whether jury charge was inadequate because it did not base secondary party's liability in causation – Whether jury charge misled jurors regarding the use they could make of accused's out-of-court statements and whether Court of Appeal failed to apply the required functional approach when reviewing the error – Whether Court of Appeal should have given reasons for dismissing grounds for appeal – Whether s. 11 of the Canada Evidence Act allows Crown to call a witness, knowing in advance that she will be hostile, in order to lead double hearsay evidence against accused under the guise of attacking the witness's credibility – Whether jury charge regarding the evidence of past abuse was sufficient to prevent propensity reasoning or to prevent jury from convicting solely to punish for past abuse – Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-5, ss. 21(1)(b), (c), Canada Evidence Act, s. 11.

The applicant and his spouse, Marcia Dooley, were convicted of the second degree murder of Randal Dooley, the applicant’s seven-year old son. Randal had lived with the couple for eleven months before his death. During that time, he suffered increasingly brutal abuse that culminated in death from a subdural haematoma caused by either a blow to his head and/or severe shaking. The Crown argued at trial that the assaultive parent deliberately inflicted an injury with intent to cause bodily harm that he or she knew would likely be fatal and the non-assaultive parent was guilty based on party liability under s. 21 (b) or (c) of the Criminal Code because he or she aided or abetted the other.