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.

Charter - Criminal law - Appellant pleading guilty to 14 charges between 1996 and 2005 - In 2011, appellant found unfit to stand trial because of intellectual disability - Motions for extension of time to appeal, leave to appeal and authorization to produce new evidence - Whether majority of Court of Appeal erred in law in dismissing appellant’s motions - Whether new evidence shows that, at time he entered guilty pleas, appellant was unfit to stand trial on criminal charges because of his intellectual disability, thus making guilty verdicts unreasonable and creating miscarriage of justice - Whether new evidence shows that appellant’s guilty pleas not entered freely and voluntarily because of his intellectual limitations, thus making guilty verdicts unreasonable and creating miscarriage of justice - Whether new evidence shows that, because of his intellectual disability, appellant did not have requisite mens rea to commit offences with which he was charged, thus making guilty verdicts unreasonable and creating miscarriage of justice - Whether new evidence shows that appellant was convicted despite suffering from mental disorder related to his intellectual disability within meaning of s. 16 of Criminal Code, thus creating miscarriage of justice - In circumstances of this case, whether infringement of appellant’s constitutional rights under ss. 7 and 11(d) of Charter requires stay of proceedings as remedy under s. 24(1) of Charter.

The appellant has an intellectual disability that was first identified at a young age. Between 1996 and 2005, he pleaded guilty to 14 offences, including sexual assault, assault, breach of a recognizance and breach of probation. He was convicted of all the charges in the Court of Québec, first in the Youth Division (when he was a teenager) and later in the Criminal and Penal Division. He was represented by counsel each time he entered a guilty plea. During that period, his fitness to stand trial was not the subject of argument in court. During a criminal trial in 2011, a Court of Québec judge found the appellant unfit to stand trial on the ground that his intellectual disability prevented him from participating in the judicial process in a meaningful way. The following month, the appellant filed a motion in the Quebec Court of Appeal seeking leave to appeal his 14 previous convictions on the ground that, because of his intellectual disability, he had been unfit to stand trial on the charges to which he had pleaded guilty between 1996 and 2005. The motion was accompanied by a motion for an extension of the time to appeal and a motion for authorization to produce new evidence (including the psychiatric evidence before the Court of Québec in 2011).