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 – Defences – Self-defence – Evidence – Accused convicted of manslaughter for stabbing deceased following altercation – Accused not testifying at trial but raising possibility of self-defence – Trial judge finding no air of reality to asserted claim of self-defence and refusing to put self-defence before jury – Court of Appeal overturning conviction and ordering new trial – Whether Court of Appeal erred in overturning trial judge’s decision not to leave self-defence with jury.

The accused, Mr. Mustard, was tried by a judge and jury for second degree murder for a fatal stabbing during an altercation. The Crown’s theory was that the accused stabbed the deceased while the two men were standing, as Mr. Mustard was seen advancing towards the deceased while holding a knife and making a “punching motion” in his direction. The accused did not testify at trial but raised the issue of self-defence, arguing that weaknesses in the Crown’s evidence supported an alternative inference – i.e., that the stabbing occurred on the ground, when the deceased was choking the accused. The trial judge refused to put self-defence before the jury, finding that there was no “air of reality” to the claim. Mr. Mustard was convicted of manslaughter. He appealed on the grounds that the judge erred by refusing to instruct the jury on self-defence.

The Court of Appeal unanimously allowed the appeal, quashed the conviction, and ordered a new trial, finding that there was in fact circumstantial evidence reasonably capable of supporting the inference that the stabbing occurred while the two men were on the ground. The Court of Appeal found that the trial judge erred by refusing to instruct the jury with respect to the accused’s claim of self-defence, by exceeding her role and engaging in a substantive weighing of the evidence, and by failing to assume the truth of the evidence that tended to support the claim of self-defence.