Fair treatment means no trial in assault case, says Neuberger
In a case that calls the actions of police and a complainant’s pattern of behaviour into question, Toronto criminal lawyer Joseph Neuberger says in an application filed with the court, that the only way for the accused to be treated fairly is to have no trial at all.
Travis Graham was charged in early 2011 with assault, knowingly uttering a verbal threat to cause death, disobeying a lawful court order and failing to have no contact or communication directly or indirectly with the complainant, a woman he was in a relationship with.
In the application, however, Neuberger notes that from the time of the accused’s arrest “the complainant has continued to engage in various acts of deceitful and illegal behaviour including breaking in to the applicant’s home and changing the locks, committing theft from the applicant’s home, and making multiple false allegations against the applicant and his family.”
“The police have not charged the complainant despite clear evidence that she has committed criminal offences,” says Neuberger in the application.
In addition, he explains in the document that: “The police’s behaviour subsequent to the applicant’s arrest – namely their lack of objectivity and biased investigation when subsequent claims were made by the complainant, led to the police assisting the complainant to commit various criminal offences against the applicant. The police’s behaviour in the circumstances is unconscionable.”
“The applicant’s right to a fair trial has been irreparably prejudiced by the cumulative effect of what has transpired during this investigation and the police’s conduct in relation to the same. Additionally, quite apart from the applicant’s fair trial interests, the integrity of the administration of justice would be brought into disrepute were this matter to proceed to trial,” adds the application.
“The continued prosecution of the applicant in these circumstances, connotes unfairness and vexatiousness to such a degree that this Court must intervene and that the only way for the accused to be treated fairly in the unique and unprecedented circumstances of this case is to have no trial at all,” he notes in the application.
The application to stay the proceedings will be heard today at the Ontario Court of Justice in Oshawa, courtroom 102, on the basis that to subject the accused to a trial in this case “would amount to an abuse of the court’s process contrary to the common law and s. 7 of the Charter.”
