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 — Extradition — Whether this Court’s decision in United States of America v. Ferras; United States of America v. Latty, [2006] 2 S.C.R. 77, 2006 SCC 33, requires an extradition judge to refuse committal when there is not a plausible case upon which a reasonable jury properly instructed could convict? — Or is the judicial function restricted to determining whether there is any evidence on each element of the offence that is not “manifestly unreliable”? — Whether surrender to face a criminal trial in a requesting state where the prosecution’s case includes intelligence evidence that cannot be meaningfully tested violates s. 7 of the Charter? — Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, s. 7.

The Applicant was wanted in France for his alleged role in a 1980 synagogue bombing that killed four and injured 40. The record of the case relied on five pieces of evidence, the Applicant’s passport, his membership in a Palestine liberation group, eyewitness descriptions of the bomber, composite sketches of the bomber resembling the Applicant, and a handwriting expert’s report comparing the Applicant’s handwriting to a hotel registration card filled out by the bomber. The extradition judge found that four of the five pieces of evidence were insufficient to justify committal. The remaining piece of evidence, the handwriting analysis, had been dismissed by the Applicant’s experts as methodologically flawed and unreliable. However, the judge concluded that although the expert’s conclusions were suspect, the evidence could not be rejected as manifestly unreliable and tipped the balance in favour of committal. The Applicant appealed on the basis that the extradition judge took an overly narrow approach to assessing the reliability of the requesting state’s evidence and misinterpreted the leading caselaw on the test for committal. In addition, the Applicant sought to adduce fresh evidence regarding the lack of French methodology for handwriting analysis. He also sought review of the Minister’s order for surrender. The Court of Appeal, however, dismissed both his appeal from committal and his application for judicial review of the Minister’s surrender order.