OTTAWA – The Supreme Court of Canada Thursday upheld a Saskatchewan judge’s decision to stay manslaughter and criminal negligence causing death charges against a man accused of killing his eight-month-old daughter in Saskatoon.
A Saskatchewan Court of Queen’s Bench judge had ordered a pretrial stay of proceedings against Kaylon Dakota Stonne in 2019 after learning that 12 hours of video from Stonne’s police custody had been erased and not given to defence.
The Crown had appealed the decision with Saskatchewan Court of Appeal arguing that the trial judge erred when he found that the destroyed video-recorded evidence was strongly relevant to Stonne's defence. The trial judge ruled that it had been destroyed as a result of unacceptable negligence on the Crown’s part and breached Stonne's right to a fair trial. The trial judge said the loss of the videotape evidence caused “severe and irreparable” prejudice to the defence and impaired his right to a fair trial.
Court documents show that witnesses told police that Stonne was partying and passed out in his infant daughter’s crib and had to be pulled off her body.
Police officers had testified that there was a large amount of urine in the baby’s crib and that it couldn’t have come from her. The infant was found deceased in her crib at about 8 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2016. The Crown’s theory was that Stonne got into the crib and caused her death.
Videotape evidence gathered by the police on the day of Stonne’s alleged offence wasn’t disclosed by the Crown and was destroyed before defence had an opportunity to view the evidence. At the time of Stonne’s charges, Saskatoon Police were only required to keep videos for 400 days. Their policy has since been updated to keep videos for 1,000 days.
A voir dire was held to determine whether the police’s failure to preserve videotape evidence of Stonne at the police station breached his s. 7 Charter rights. The trial judge ruled that Stonne’s rights were violated and ordered a stay of proceedings.
The Crown appealed the stay of proceedings with the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal.
On May 28, 2021, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal upheld the trial judge’s stay of proceedings. Saskatchewan's highest court said that the video may have shown whether Stonne’s pants were dry. Police hadn’t documented whether Stonne smelled like urine.
The Crown then appealed the case with the Supreme Court of Canada and on Dec. 9, 2021, Canada's highest court dismissed the appeal.
ljoy@glaciermedia.ca
