A man who pleaded guilty in connection with the abduction and slaying of a male in North Vancouver, as well as an unrelated assault, was sentenced Friday to seven years in jail.

The sentence imposed on Casey James Hiscoe, 23, by B.C. Supreme Court Justice Terence Schultes came after the accused pleaded guilty to conspiracy to unlawfully confine Peng Sun, 22, and accessory after the fact to murder.

The judge accepted a joint submission by the Crown and defence, and spoke of the need to deter and denounce such serious crimes. After giving Hiscoe credit for pre-sentence custody, the judge reduced the sentence to five years, eight months in jail.

Court heard that on Sept. 27, 2015, Sun was held for ransom and ultimately killed after being lured to a residence in North Van by Hiscoe’s co-accused, Tian Yi Zhang, who also pleaded guilty in the case and in February was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

The involvement of Hiscoe, who was employed as a dealer in Zhang’s illicit gambling enterprise, began when he introduced Zhang to a man who has only been identified in court as Jay.

The accused knew that Zhang and Jay would work together to plan and execute a kidnapping for ransom of a yet-to-be-determined wealthy individual and on the day of the abduction was aware that Sun had been selected.

He also knew that the confinement of Sun, who came from a family of some financial means, would take place at the North Vancouver home where Hiscoe was living at the time.

Before Sun arrived at the home, Hiscoe left the premises and travelled to Richmond, where he drove by the Sun residence to check for police activity, sending a WeChat message to Zhang after noting there was no activity.

Zhang placed a series of ransom calls to Sun’s parents in China, demanding they pay the equivalent of $2.5 million. Sun was put on the phone and at one point told his father: “Dad, someone has a gun to my head, they want money.”

The victim’s family transferred the equivalent of about $340,000 to a Chinese bank account. None of the money has been recovered.

Around midnight, Hiscoe, who was not in the home during Sun’s confinement or the extortion, was told that Sun was dead. He sent Zhang a series of messages with instructions about how to clean-up and remove evidence from the residence, in an attempt to insulate themselves from the crime.

The next morning, the victim’s Bentley was found by police parked at the side of the road near Sykes and Wellington in North Van.

Zhang and Hiscoe made plans to move Sun’s body from the Bentley to a rental car that Zhang was driving. Hiscoe arrived at the location of the Bentley, having brought two men he had recruited to assist with “moving a package.” 

Sun’s body, which was wrapped in a tarp, was lifted out of the Bentley’s trunk and placed in the trunk of Zhang’s car. Police swept in and arrested the accused.

Unknown to Hiscoe, Sun had been undressed down to his underwear and his hands and feet bound. His head and face, except for the lower part of his nose, were covered in duct tape and he’d died of strangulation caused by having a zap strap tightened around his neck.

The assault conviction related to an incident three weeks before the slaying in which Hiscoe grabbed a man by the face with both hands before the victim fled a vehicle occupied by the accused and Zhang.

Following submissions from Crown counsel Jennifer Dyck and defence lawyer David Ferguson, Hiscoe briefly addressed the court, apologizing to the victim’s family.

“I truly understand the impact that I’ve had, the devastating effect that that family is going to have to live with for the rest of their lives because of my naivete and sheer stupidity. I am forever in debt.”

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The husband of a Victoria woman who is accused of murdering their toddler has lost a bid to have her application for spousal support thrown out of court.

In April 2016, Kaela Janine Mehl was arrested and charged with the September 2015 first-degree murder of the couple’s 18-month-old daughter, Charlotte.

Mehl and her husband, Daniel Cunningham, who began living together in January 2010 and were married in November 2011, separated in May 2015, with Mehl and the little girl moving from the Victoria home where the family had been living.

In January, Mehl filed an application in B.C. Supreme Court seeking spousal support from Cunningham and an interest in the home on Hawkes Avenue. Cunningham responded by seeking an order to have Mehl’s claims dismissed before the trial in the family law case, which is scheduled for February 2018.

His lawyer accepted that the conduct of the parties was irrelevant to a claim of spousal support, but cited several prior civil-court cases where a spouse who had attempted to murder his or her partner had been denied support due to the extraordinary circumstances.

In an affidavit filed dated Jan. 31 and cited in the court ruling in the civil case, Cunningham claimed that his wife had taken an overdose of medication and had given the medication to their daughter, resulting in her death. The mom then remained in hospital for several months, according to the affidavit.

In the court ruling, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Peter Voith noted that Mehl did not “expressly” dispute the husband’s allegations and had accepted that she was hospitalized in “mental-health departments” for around six months after September 2015.

The accused, however, argued that her impeding criminal trial, which is scheduled for September, inhibited her ability to lead evidence she might otherwise require on the issue of spousal support, noted the judge.

In dismissing Cunningham’s application, the judge said that he did not have evidence or facts, even on the civil burden of proof, to blame the girl’s death on Mehl and added there were unfortunately many circumstances where a child dies after being left in the care of a parent.

“Such tragedies may arise, directly or indirectly, because a parent is mentally unwell,” said the judge. “In this case there is some evidence, without my making any finding in this regard, that Ms. Mehl suffered from and continues to suffer from some mental illness.

“I do not consider that it would be appropriate to deny one parent and spouse spousal support without a better and more precise understanding of the circumstances that led to the death of the parties’ child.”

The judge also dismissed the husband’s application to throw out Mehl’s bid for an interest in the property.

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The B.C. government is defending itself against a class-action lawsuit alleging it misspent millions on partisan political ads during the recent provincial election campaign.

In a lawsuit filed in March before the official campaign got underway, David Trapp, the representative plaintiff, claimed that the government had spent up to $15 million on advertising for the purpose of enhancing the image of the B.C. Liberal party, which was also named as a defendant.

During the campaign, the government directed a freeze on all “non-essential” advertising and public communications.

On May 3, less than a week before the election, the government filed its response to the class-action lawsuit, denying the allegations and asserting that it is responsible for ensuring public money is “controlled, accounted for and well managed.”

The response to the civil claim filed in B.C. Supreme Court says that the government must as a matter of policy endorse advertising that is “fact-based” and points to or provides information on policies, programs and services.

“The government also requires that public money not be used to purchase advertising in support of a political party.”

The class-action suit claims that in addition to burnishing the image of the Liberals, the ads were designed to improve the then-governing party’s likelihood of success in the election by winning enough seats to hold a majority government.

The government’s response says that the proposed class-action group — all B.C. taxpayers — is not one to which the government owes a fiduciary or other private law duty enforceable in court.

“The fiduciary duty alleged in this case is both novel and broad. It does not fall within a historically recognized category.

“The collection of taxes and distribution of public money held by the government is a purely public function. It has no private law analogue that could ground the recognition of a fiduciary duty.”

Asked to comment on the government’s response, Trapp’s lawyer Paul Doroshenko said he and his client have a “good legal basis” for their argument.

“Generally speaking, I think every government has a fiduciary duty. You discharge your fiduciary duty very easily as a government. But as soon as you go and use taxpayers’ money for a purpose that is not for the taxpayers, you’ve breached your fiduciary duty.”

Doroshenko said that despite the election result, which saw the Liberals fall just short of a majority government, they will be pursuing the lawsuit.

“We looked at the replies filed by the government and the Liberal party and it hasn’t really changed our direction. It was more or less what we expected.”

The next steps in the case include a bid to get certification of the class-action suit, but no date has been set for the next court appearance and the process is going to be a lengthy one, said Doroshenko.

Trapp, a retired White Rock resident, said he was upset to watch on television the ads that he believed were a waste of taxpayers’ money.

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A judge has denied the City of Vancouver an application for an injunction to remove a homeless encampment on a city-owned lot on Main Street that has been vacant for nearly 20 years.

In a ruling released Wednesday, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Neena Sharma said that the city had not met the legal test for an injunction, including a requirement that it prove that it would suffer “irreparable harm” if the court order was not granted.

She noted that the occupants of the tent city at 950 Main had persuasively argued that their safety would be jeopardized if they were required to leave the site.

A lawyer for the city had told the judge that there was an urgent need for the roughly 50 homeless people to vacate the site because there was a risk that a social-housing project planned for the lot would lose funding. Iain Dixon said that a significant amount of funding would be jeopardized if the development, which would see 26 units of social housing built, did not go ahead.

But the judge said she did not have sufficient evidence of the urgency and noted that there was no indication that dates on a timeline for the project were inflexible. Sharma said that while everyone can agree that social housing is important, the occupants of the site had pointed out that the tent city was preferable to whatever might be planned for the site.

“They also say that if they have to leave the site, they will have nowhere else to go,” said the judge.

On April 28, a locked chain-link fence was breached at the unoccupied city lot on Main and a number of people entered the site to establish the tent city.

Dixon earlier told the judge that other homeless camps have been set up around the province that have resulted in a number of court cases and noted that in cases in which the City of Vancouver has had to deal with a homeless tent city in the past, the city had waited until a protest site had become unsafe before seeking an injunction. “This is different because this is an active development site and we are trying to build social housing for disadvantaged people.”

Dixon added that the site, which has about 30 tents and other structures, has not represented a significant safety issue, but the city needs to gain access in order to do an environmental assessment before construction can begin.

Maria Wallstam, a homeless advocate who is a member of Alliance Against Displacement, told the judge that the site was a safe location for people and that a court order to dismantle the tent city would compromise their safety. She said that there was a “desperate” need for housing for homeless people and added that the tent city had had to turn away a dozen people every day since it was set up.

Wallstam told the judge that while the social-housing project was not insignificant, it would only result in eight homeless people qualifying for shelter at the location. She said that there were “immense” mental-health benefits for people on the site and if they were forced to leave, they’d be back living in alleys and faced with threats to their well-being, including violence.

Asked to comment outside court, Wallstam said that the judge’s ruling was a “very positive development” for the occupants at the site. “Part of our argument was that displacing the tent city would jeopardize the Charter right of homeless people to security and liberty, and we won. For now.”

Court heard that the lot was acquired by the city in June 1998 for the purpose of development of social housing. In January 2016, city council agreed in principle to the development of a mixed-use project with commercial and retail, as well as social housing. It is one of four sites in which a total of 600-700 social-housing units are to be built for aboriginal households. In April, the city received a development-permit application for the site filed on behalf of the Lu’ma Native Housing Society.

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The great-aunt of a boy who spent a school day tied at the ankle to another student is going to court in a bid to overturn a decision by the B.C. Commissioner for Teacher Regulation to take no action against the teacher.

The boy — who was eight at the time and in Grade 2 at the Capilano Little Ones School in West Vancouver — had his ankle tied to another boy with a strip of T-shirt material, three-legged race style, after the two boys had been misbehaving together, according to court documents.

A teacher of the boy at the First Nation school had consulted with her superior and a decision had been made to keep the boys tied together all day, on May 13, 2015, as a different approach to help them learn to resolve conflict appropriately, say the documents.

The boys remained tied together for much of the day, including at lunch hour, and at lunch were told by school staff not to use the playground equipment such as swings and the slide.

During a break in the afternoon, one of the boys asked the teacher if they could be untied but she told them that they were to remain tied up for the whole day.

No harm came to the children but some staff were uncomfortable with the situation and contacted the head of the Squamish Nation Education Department, which later in the day directed that the boys be untied.

Jo-Ann Nahanee, the grand-aunt of the boy, says in her petition filed in B.C. Supreme Court that she first learned of the unusual situation at a June 7, 2015 meeting of the Squamish Nation, of which she is a member.

“When I heard about the incident, I was very upset, and I stood up and told everyone at the meeting that I did not agree that tying two children together all day long was an acceptable form of punishment, particularly for First Nations children,” Nahanee says in an affidavit attached to the petition.

“I was subjected to the same form of punishment in the residential school where I attended. The nuns and priests used public shaming to punish me, for example by tying me up at the ankle to the tallest boy in the class. I was humiliated by such punishment, and have carried this humiliation with me to this day.”

In a decision in the case that was released March 17, Bruce Preston, the B.C. Commissioner for Teacher Regulation, said that the use of the three-legged strategy was “flawed” and the students were not treated with appropriate dignity and respect.

Preston, a retired B.C. Supreme Court judge, said the strategy employed by the teacher, Chantel Michell, was also not sensitive to community members who are survivors or relatives of survivors of the residential schools.

But he said he had decided to take no further action because there was “no reasonable prospect” that a hearing panel would find Michell’s conduct was a marked departure that constitutes professional misconduct.

Preston noted that Michell was not primarily responsible for the strategy as she was a relatively new teacher and had deferred to direction from her immediate supervisor, Cheryl Lloyd, the then-principal of the school.

Nahanee’s petition seeks an order quashing Preston’s decision and sending it back to the commissioner with directions to review the matter.

No response been filed to the petition, which contains allegations that have not been tested in court. A spokesman for the education ministry said there would be no comment at this time.

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A man who was wanted by police alleges that he was severely beaten by a number of Vancouver cops as he was being arrested and that the officers covered up the assault.

Kalman Hlavacs, who had a warrant out for his arrest for property crimes, says that on Nov. 17 last year, he was identified in Vancouver on a SkyTrain heading east and that members of the Vancouver police department pursued him to the Columbia station in New Westminster.

In a notice of civil claim filed in B.C. Supreme Court, he alleges that the cops chased him on foot after he got out of the SkyTrain station and when they caught him, they delivered a severe beating without lawful cause.

The VPD officers conspired to beat Hlavacs and to cover up the beating and jointly concocted a false pretext for the assault, the lawsuit says.

“VPD members who did not physically beat the plaintiff either directed the beating, encouraged the beating, or failed to assist the plaintiff knowing that there was no lawful basis for the beating,” it says.

“VPD members failed to take accurate notes and make accurate records, and through their deliberate misrepresentations or silence, knowingly enabled a cover-up of the beating.”

Hlavacs, who has a series of convictions for break and enter, says he suffered a concussion, intracranial bleeding and related cognitive impairment and a broken nose.

He also claims the assault left him with a permanent loss of his sense of smell, permanent ringing in his ears, permanently blurred vision, slowed and slurred speech and cuts and bruises.

Hlavacs, who is currently serving a jail term for break and enter, is seeking unspecified general, special, aggravated and punitive damages.

“The VPD members used unlawful and excessive force to arrest the plaintiff and they are liable to compensate the plaintiff for his injuries and loss of income and earning capacity,” says the suit.

Jason Gratl, a lawyer for Hlavacs, said that even though his client is a “prolific offender,” there was no basis for what he called an “extrajudicial punishment” delivered by police.

Ten officers are named as defendants in the lawsuit, which contains allegations that have not been tested in court. No response has yet been filed to the lawsuit.

A spokesman for the Vancouver police said there would be no comment as the matter is before the courts.

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A young Richmond girl was spirited away to Vancouver Island for protection after her gangster father and the family received death threats from two contract killers well known to police, according to a family law court ruling.

The girl, four years old at the time, was accompanied by her grandmother and was hidden away with a succession of friends and relatives until the threat had been investigated by police and child protection services officials.

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Robin Baird said that what caught his attention was the readiness with which the dad, a “self-proclaimed” gangster who is only identified by his initials in the judge’s ruling, accepted the threats to be genuine and the immediacy and urgency of his fear.

“The Vancouver police gang squad considered the threats to be highly credible and I think they were right,” said the judge.

“For a number of harrowing weeks, in other words, the respondent’s dangerous lifestyle and violent associations created a fugitive of his own daughter.”

The recounting of the dramatic tale took up a good deal of time at the family law trial, which dealt with issues of child maintenance payments and suitable guardianship and parenting arrangements after the dad, 50, and mom, 32, had separated from one another.

The judge noted that the dad’s initial reaction to the crisis in the summer of 2015 was highly revealing in that after the mom reported the situation to police, he asked, “Do you want to get me killed?”

“He declined to take advice from the Vancouver gang squad, saying, ‘You look at these things as police officers; I look at them as a gangster.'”

Although the dad opposed help when his child’s life was under a “present and credible threat of murder” and thought of himself first, the mom came up short as well, said the judge.

“She was offered police protection and advice, but turned it down in a huff when detectives started asking her pointed questions about her own affairs that she didn’t want to answer.”

Fortunately, no harm came to the family and no further threats were received. About two months later, child protection workers re-evaluated the case and decided there were no continuing security concerns and Vancouver police decided to close their file, according to the ruling.

The judge concluded that the threats likely had to do with the gambling addiction of the dad, a Chinese man who for years has been subject to a deportation order back to China that Canadian authorities haven’t been able to enforce because Chinese authorities don’t want him either.

The contract killers with whom the dad had been friendly for years had, it seemed, turned on him because he owed them money, said Baird. The threat was abated when the dad apparently paid off his debt.

Court-ordered documentation from the B.C. Lottery Corporation showed that in each of the years 2013 and 2014, the dad had purchased more than $1 million in gambling chips from a single Vancouver casino and was greeted “like visiting royalty” in at least two other casinos.

The judge noted that the dad gave no details about his past and refused to specify the source of his money.

“It might be dangerous for him to do so, I suppose, and it certainly would not assist in portraying him as anyone’s idea of an exemplary parent.”

The dad did not deny a “serious” criminal background, admitting he’d done many bad things, but when pressed for details, would only say the crimes never involved bodily injury or physical coercion.

The mom, who was born in Victoria and is a Canadian citizen, refused to shed light on those matters, an omission the judge found to be in part motivated by fear.

Court also heard the couple had enjoyed a lavish lifestyle including extravagant parties, high-end nightclubs, tony restaurants, fancy cars and pricey accessories. Their credit card bills, which exceeded $20,000 a month, were paid for by the dad’s “inexhaustible” supply of ready money — wads of cash hidden all over the house in drawers, cupboards, boxes and bags.

The judge said that although the mom, who operates a retail store in downtown Vancouver, shared “a good deal of blame” for exposing the girl to harm, she was also motivated to ensure the girl has as normal an upbringing as possible in the “off kilter” environment they lived in.

He declined to grant the mom sole guardianship of the girl, however, saying that he was “cautiously optimistic” that the dad’s behaviour, outlook and attitude will improve.

“He has major flaws, no doubt about that, but as a parent he is far from unsalvageable. The important thing is that (the girl) loves the respondent and is strongly bonded to him. It is in (the girl’s) best interest that the respondent should remain a significant part of her life.”

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A man who fatally stabbed a taxi passenger at a busy downtown Vancouver intersection should spend 12 years behind bars before being eligible to apply for parole, a prosecutor argued Tuesday.

In November, a B.C. Supreme Court jury found Kenneth Bryson Williams, 26, guilty of the February 2014 second-degree murder of Robert Tyson Smith, 28.

Second-degree murder carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison with a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 25 years of parole ineligibility.

At a sentencing hearing Tuesday, Crown counsel Daniel Mulligan said the aggravating factors were such that Williams should spend 12 years in prison before he can apply for parole.

Court heard that the violent altercation happened after Smith and a friend were travelling in a taxi headed south on Granville Street and Williams and a companion were walking north on Granville.

Williams and his companion, Robert White, were seen yelling and swearing and kicking a street bench and garbage can before crossing Georgia Street through traffic and against the light.

As the two men crossed the street, they challenged cars on Georgia, raising their arms and yelling.

Mulligan told B.C. Supreme Court Justice Patrice Abrioux that the two men were looking for trouble before they crossed in front of Smith’s taxi on Granville and one of them kicked or struck the cab.

Smith got out of the taxi and confronted the men, and White and Smith started to fight. Williams interjected himself into the fight, attacking Smith with a knife and stabbing him twice, the chest wound being fatal.

Mulligan said Williams “blindsided” Smith, leaving the victim with no chance to defend himself against the attack. He said the aggravating factors also included that Williams was in possession of a knife while under the influence of alcohol in Vancouver’s entertainment district.

“He represented a threat to every member of the public who happened to cross his path and, indeed, Mr. Williams took the life of a complete stranger. This was a tragic and senseless killing of an unarmed man in one of Vancouver’s busiest public intersections.”

The deceased’s father, Richard Smith, and his older brother, Adam Smith, read out victim-impact statements in court. The dad said it was painful to speak of his younger son in the past tense and said the murder had been “absolutely devastating” to his family. “Tyson’s legacy of being a good and strong man was cut short by the heinous and cowardly act of murder.”

The brother also decried what he called a “cowardly attack” in which his brother didn’t have a chance to defend himself. “I can’t fathom how my brother’s life was taken for no reason and how the offender will be out living his again at some point.”

Jonathan Waddington, a lawyer for Williams, argued there were nothing other than factors in favour of the minimum of 10 years of parole ineligibility for his client. Some of the factors he cited included Williams’s youth, his lack of a prior criminal record and his prospects for rehabilitation.

He also noted that Williams was an alcoholic who was drunk on the night of the fatal attack and that his alcoholism stemmed from an aboriginal background that included exposure to his mother being abused at the hands of his father, with alcoholism running through the family.

The judge said he would impose sentence June 6.

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Dozens of residents who have been leasing property on the Musqueam reserve in Vancouver are breathing a sigh of relief after a judge accepted their court challenge to a massive increase in their rents.

In 2015, the band issued notices to 74 leaseholders in Musqueam Park of a rent increase to an average of $80,000 a year from the $10,000 average annual rent they’d been paying since 1995.

A total of 69 of the residents who live in the southwest Vancouver neighbourhood joined forces and went to the Federal Court of Canada to fight the increases, which they argued were not fair.

In a recent ruling, Justice Anne Mactavish accepted the evidence of the experts from the plaintiff leaseholders as to what the fair rent should be.

Randall Hordo, a lawyer for the leaseholders, said that under the ruling, the rents will now average less than $25,000 a year, to be paid from 2015 to 2035.

“They’re relieved,” he said of his clients. “There’s been a tremendous concern about the loss of their family homes, the potential loss of their family homes. It’s been a very intense and emotionally draining experience for all of them. But now there’s stability going forward.”

Since the band issued the notices in 2015, the leaseholders have been paying rent at the previous rate.

It’s the second time the contentious issue of rent increases for the properties, which are located adjacent to the tony Shaughnessy Golf and Country Club, has gone before the courts.

The first rent review was in 1995, when the Musqueam demanded that the leaseholders pay an average of $36,000 a year. The residents, who are on 99-year leases that began in 1965, had been paying less than $400 a year up to that point.

The case went to the Federal Court of Canada and to the Supreme Court of Canada, with the country’s highest court finding that a fair rent was six per cent of the current land value, for an average of $10,000 a year, to be paid from 1995 until 2015.

In her ruling, Justice Mactavish noted that each side was harshly critical of their opponents’ land appraisal expert, impugning both their competence and their professional integrity.

Both appraisers were properly accredited with years of experience in the Vancouver market but the judge found that the appraiser for the leaseholders had superior qualifications.

Mactavish said the appraiser for the band, who put forward a proposed average rent of up to $142,000 a year, showed a lack of care in his analysis, which raised serious concerns about the reliability of his evidence.

The appraiser for the leaseholders on the other hand provided a careful and transparent analysis that was backed up by market data, said the judge.

“His analysis showed rigour and a depth of understanding of the data and its application to the valuation exercise at issue in this action.”

The defendant band has 30 days in which to decide whether they want to file an appeal of the ruling, which was released May 18. The band could not be reached for comment.

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Two men who pleaded guilty to trafficking in fentanyl and cocaine have had their suspended sentences overturned and substituted with jail terms following an appeal by the Crown.

The decision by a three-judge panel of the B.C. Court of Appeal came after the Crown argued that the suspended sentences imposed on Aden Lee Aaron Rutter of Nanaimo and Michael Bruce Ramstead of Fort St. John, both first-time offenders, were unfit in light of the deadly and devastating effects of fentanyl.

The panel agreed with the prosecution that the Provincial Court judges in both cases had made mistakes and set aside the suspended sentences.

Rutter, 22, admitted he’d been a partner and active participant in a dial-a-dope operation for four to five months before his arrest in June 2015. Court heard that Rutter, whose share of the profits was about $1,000 a week, had 35.5 grams of cocaine and 12 g of fentanyl in his possession when he was taken into custody. Rutter, who by age 20 was addicted to cocaine, heroin and fentanyl, said he believed the fentanyl to be heroin.

In her ruling overturning the sentences, B.C. Court of Appeal Justice Lauri Ann Fenlon said that the errors by the sentencing judge in Rutter’s case included speculation that the accused, who had maintained abstinence in the community following his arrest, would more readily relapse if sent to jail and would resume dealing when released.

Fenlon also said that the judge, who is not identified in her ruling, had lost sight of the effectiveness of jail as a general deterrent. She imposed a sentence of six months’ jail on Rutter to be followed by 24 months of probation.

Ramstead, 24, sold drugs to an undercover police officer on three separate occasions between April 25, 2014, and May 10, 2014.

Fenlon found that the judge in Ramstead’s case erred in finding that Ramstead’s use of the profits he made from selling the drugs to pay for his post-secondary education amounted to an “exceptional circumstance.”

The Crown pointed out that Ramstead was not a drug-user, had had a stable upbringing, did well in school and chose to deal drugs because he was attracted to the people involved, and the money appealed to him.

“This court has consistently held that it is highly blameworthy for an offender to engage in the commercial distribution of drugs for financial gain to the detriment of those who are unfortunate enough to be victimized by the drug trade,” said Fenlon in her ruling.

Ramstead was handed a sentence of six months in jail to be followed by 12 months’ probation.

Fenlon added that the jail sentences for the two men should not been seen as revisiting a recent case of the Appeal Court that found the sentencing range for street-level trafficking in fentanyl to be 18 to 36 months in jail.

“Rather, the sentences reflect the timing of the offences prior to the application of the new range, and the position taken by the Crown in the courts below.”

Justice Peter Lowry and Justice Peter Willcock agreed with Fenlon’s ruling.

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A man who committed two brutal assaults in the Chilliwack area has had his dangerous offender designation and indeterminate jail sentence overturned on appeal.

In May 2011, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Arnold-Bailey declared Ryan Joseph Walsh, now 31, a dangerous offender following his convictions for two aggravated assaults four years apart.

The first incident occurred in 2004 after Walsh, 18 at the time, had attended a Halloween house party with friends. As the party was breaking up, he and his friends were outside and some of them began to vandalize a truck.

When the truck owner, Garry Wilson, came outside to investigate, there was a confrontation between one of Walsh’s friends and a house guest of Wilson.

Walsh reacted violently to the situation, taking a hammer he’d been using to try to light fireworks and striking Wilson, 60, over the head two or three times. Wilson suffered serious and lasting injuries.

The second assault happened in 2008 and involved a confrontation between two groups — Walsh and some of his friends, and a man named Bradley Yarrow and some of Yarrow’s friends.

Walsh used a knife to stab Yarrow in the back. Walsh earlier had his head smashed through a truck window by one of Yarrow’s friends. Without prompt medical treatment, Yarrow’s injuries would have been life-threatening.

On his appeal of the dangerous offender ruling, Walsh argued the trial judge had failed to establish the two offences in question involved a pattern of repetitive behaviour in which the crimes were remarkably similar.

In a split decision, two members of a three-judge panel of the B.C. Court of Appeal found that the judge had erred in her analysis of the legal requirements in the case.

B.C. Court of Appeal Justice Elizabeth Bennett, writing the majority ruling, said that the 2004 assault was “seriously dangerous” and violent, with no real motivation and far exceeding any proportional response.

“The second incident, in my view, is not remarkably similar, and is qualitatively quite different,” said Bennett, noting that after Walsh had his head smashed through a window he and his friends “not surprisingly” had pursued the attackers and confronted them again.

“While it certainly would have been better had Mr. Walsh ‘turned the other cheek’ and contacted the police rather than take matters into his own hands, his violent act on the second occasion was very different than the first. It was a retaliatory response to a very unusual situation.”

Bennett ordered the case be sent back to court for Walsh to be given a determinate jail sentence.

Justice David Tysoe agreed with Bennett’s ruling.

In her dissenting reasons, Justice Gail Dickson found the trial judge had applied the correct legal test in finding the requisite pattern was “clear and easily identifiable.”

Although some of the similarities the judge noted were superficial, others were essential elements of a “distinct and individualized” pattern that allowed her to confidently predict Walsh was a risk to re-offend, said Dickson.

Both incidents involved “sudden, wholly excessive” assaults with weapons committed while in the company of peers and precipitated by Walsh becoming involved in disputes between others out of a profoundly misguided sense of justice or loyalty, she added.

“In addition, both incidents involved multiple acts of unrestrained violence, were intended to cause at least severe physical injury and, in fact, caused very considerable physical harm that could have resulted in death.”

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RCMP breached the rights of a Fort St. John man facing terrorism charges, but the violations are not so serious that they warrant the exclusion of evidence gathered by police, a judge has ruled.

In July 2015, Othman Ayed Hamdan was arrested and charged with three counts of counselling the commission of indictable offences for the benefit of, at the direction of, or in association with a terrorist organization.

He was also charged with one count of indirectly instructing persons to carry out terrorist activities.

The offences relate to a series of Facebook posts, between September 2014 and July 2015, that are alleged to have been supportive of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a listed terrorist organization.

Hamdan also made a number of statements to police before and after his arrest.

Following pre-trial hearings, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Bruce Butler concluded that the police had violated Hamdan’s right to a lawyer at the first reasonably available opportunity.

“The police could have, but failed to account for his rights by bringing a mobile phone with them and arranging for a private place for him to speak with counsel at the scene of the arrest,” said the judge.

“It was not until 37 minutes after the arrest that the police phoned Legal Aid on Mr. Hamdan’s behalf. I found that the RCMP did not, however, breach its obligation not to elicit any information from Mr. Hamdan before he was able to speak with his lawyer.”

The judge also found that Hamdan’s right against unreasonable search and seizure was violated when a civilian member of the RCMP who was less familiar with the requirement for warrants than officers are made an unauthorized search of the accused’s email accounts.

“Accordingly, even though the unauthorized search occurred without any intent to violate Mr. Hamdan’s rights, the violation was the result of police negligence,” said the judge, adding that the breach was “promptly” and “appropriately” dealt with when it was discovered.

The defence argued that there was a “contextual” connection between the Facebook posts and the breaches, and that allowing the evidence would bring the administration of justice into disrepute.

But the judge disagreed with those arguments, finding that most of the posts were obtained long before the arrest.

“The accused was not directly involved in the events that led to the capture of the posts; Facebook posts are open source material found on the Internet. The collection of the posts was not part of an event between the accused and the police.”

Any connection between the breach of a right to a lawyer and the accused’s statements to police was also tenuous, said the judge.

On at least two occasions before he got to speak to his lawyer, Hamdan tried to discuss the charges with the police officers, with the officers reminding him of his right to speak to counsel and refusing to discuss the charges with him, said Butler.

“As a result, prior to obtaining legal advice, Mr. Hamdan made no statements to the police of any substance or relevance to the charges. Accordingly, the impact of the breach on Mr. Hamdan’s protected interests was not serious.”

Court heard that Hamdan came under scrutiny after the shootings on Parliament Hill in Ottawa in 2014 prompted the RCMP to search social media for potential threats to national security.

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A man accused of murdering his mother threatened to blow up the family home in Vancouver’s Dunbar neighbourhood during a lengthy standoff with police and later confessed that he had killed “the witch.”

On the first day of his trial Monday, Brian Whitlock pleaded not guilty to the Nov. 8, 2014, second-degree murder of his mom, Barbara Whitlock.

In his opening statement, Crown counsel Elliot Poll said that police were alerted after Brian’s brother, Spencer Whitlock, arrived at the family home at 3171 West 23rd Ave. to collect some personal belongings and discovered a body in the backyard.

“He did not know who it was or if it was a man or a woman,” Poll told B.C. Supreme Court Justice Joyce DeWitt-Van Oosten. “He noted that the person had lost blood and that the person was either dead or unconscious.”

Poll said that after making his observations, Spencer Whitlock walked to the bottom of the stairs leading to a patio, where he saw his brother, Brian.

“The accused said to him, ‘You know where mom is? I’m looking for her. I just got here,’ ” said the prosecutor.

After speaking to his brother, Spencer Whitlock left the home and tried to call his mom, who did not answer, and then tried to call his stepfather in Hawaii before getting a hold of police. When cops arrived, they found the mom’s body in the northwest corner of the yard and used a loud hailer to try to get Brian to come out of the house.

“During the standoff, the accused yelled that: ‘She’s dead. She’s dead!’ ” said Poll. “He invited police in so that he could kill them. He threatened to blow up the house. In that regard, police officers could smell gas from the house and had to turn off the gas.”

During the standoff, which continued until the following morning, Brian was seen doing what turned out to be extensive damage to the house, said the Crown. Also during the standoff, a third brother, Jeffrey Whitlock, who lived in the basement suite, left the premises after being ordered out of the home.

Eventually, a police emergency-response team entered the home and arrested the accused. He had a “significant” amount of blood on him, in particular blood on his side and arm, Poll said.

The Crown said that after the accused was taken to jail, he told an officer: “Yeah, I killed the witch.” The voluntariness of that statement is expected to be challenged by the defence, he added.

Poll told the judge that when police searched the home, they found inscribed on the wall the words: “I killed Barbie.” He said the accused referred to his mom as Barbie.

Police found a splitting maul on the front steps of the residence that Poll described as the murder weapon. There were also a number of knives found inside and outside the residence, including a meat cleaver in the sink with red liquid on it.

“The Crown’s theory is that a knife was used to inflict some of the significant injuries to the body of Ms. Whitlock,” said Poll. A pathologist will testify that the main cause of death was “blunt and sharp-force” injuries to the victim’s head and neck, he said.

In summer 2012, more than two years before the murder, Brian used a baseball bat to beat his two-year-old German shepherd, Captain, and left the dog for dead in a Kitsilano dumpster. Whitlock, who was 26 at the time, received a 60-day jail sentence and a lifetime ban on owning animals after pleading guilty to animal cruelty.

Mental-health records cited in the animal-cruelty case indicated he’d been diagnosed with psychosis and schizophrenia.

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A society that promotes a controversial B.C. tax rebate program has agreed to release financial statements being sought by the New York Times, according to a court document filed Monday.

AdvantageBC, which bills itself as a non-governmental, non-profit society whose mandate is to encourage companies to locate international business activity in B.C., claims in its response to a petition filed by the newspaper in B.C. Supreme Court that it is a member-funded society and should not be required to disclose the information.

“However in the interests of transparency and to avoid expending scarce judicial resources and occupying court time on the matters raised in this petition, AdvantageBC has opted to voluntarily disclose its 2016 financial statements,” says the response.

“Further, AdvantageBC and Colin Hansen, its president and CEO, have opted to voluntarily disclose Mr. Hansen’s annual salary.”

Neil Chantler, a lawyer for the newspaper, said that he was “pleased” that the society had agreed to provide the disclosure being sought in the petition.

The newspaper filed the petition earlier this month after publishing an article which questioned the 29-year-old program’s job creation results, transparency and benefits to B.C. residents. The article stated that the program, which is administered by the B.C. finance ministry and which was defended by Liberal leader Christy Clark, has cost $140 million in tax refunds and created up to 300 jobs.

In March, the paper wrote to Hansen, a former B.C. finance minister, requesting copies of the society’s financial records but Hansen denied the request on the basis that AdvantageBC was a member-funded society, according to the court documents.

The paper applied to the B.C. Registrar of Societies for an order that the society produce the records and on March 31, the registrar found that the society was not member-funded and that it had failed to comply with the Societies Act. 

The registrar ordered that AdvantageBC provide the records within 15 days or an explanation as to why the documents could not be provided.

On April 13, Hansen provided a statement to the registrar in which he again asserted the society was member-funded and thus was exempt from disclosure, a move that prompted the paper to file the petition.

In the response to the petition, the society says that there is a valid policy reason — to ensure oversight and accountability — for imposing different disclosure requirements on societies that receive public funds and those that are member-funded or largely member-funded.

“Government and Canadian taxpayers have a right to know precisely how public funds are being allocated,” says the response. “A different logic applies to societies that do not receive public funds.”

The response says that AdvantageBC has not received any government funds for its operations for many years and even if it was not formally registered as a member-funded society when the paper made its application for records, it was in fact member-funded. Hansen could not be reached Monday.

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A woman who was fighting her family for control of millions in assets, including two West Vancouver homes, has had her claims thrown out after a judge ruled she was engaging in an abuse of process.

Rosa Donna Este claimed that in 2013, her mother, Mina Esteghamat-Ardakani, and her brother, Francis Amir Este, encouraged her to come up with a false story that the mom was the true owner of assets that were in fact owned by her, in order to defend herself in a divorce action filed by her husband.

In court documents she said she and the mom signed fake, back-dated trust declarations, prepared using a template created by the brother, for the purpose of providing a false documentary record for use in the divorce case.

The mom, with the brother’s involvement and participation, also urged her to give false evidence regarding ownership of the assets, which included homes on Bellevue Avenue and Constantine Place in West Van, together valued at more than $10 million, Este’s notice of civil claim alleged.

Este also alleged that $3.4 million of her assets were transferred from one bank to another and then placed in her mother’s name in order to hide the assets in the divorce action, which resulted in the husband getting only $70,000.

But in November 2014 a breakdown occurred in the family relationship, with Este claiming she refused to provide a false statement or alibi, which the mom and brother had asked her to give, regarding the destruction of medical charts from the former medical practice of the brother, who was being audited for allegedly over-billing MSP for millions of dollars.

Este, a former dentist who subsequently worked as a realtor, alleged that the mom and brother acted “with malice” toward her and sought to exact revenge by disavowing her claims.

She claimed her mom brought up her children to be distrustful of people outside of their immediate family circle, including potential romantic partners, and had regular discussions that included how to best protect their assets against potential future claims.

The mother and brother, who rejected Este’s claims, responded to her suit by filing applications to have the case dismissed on the basis that it was an abuse of process of the courts and that there was no evidence to support her case.

Este claimed that during the divorce proceedings she acted like a “robot” and lacked judgment, but in his ruling on the case B.C. Supreme Court Justice Gordon Funt noted she did not plead that she lacked capacity. The judge found she was capable of making decisions about her affairs.

Funt said that for the purposes of the applications before him, he was assuming that the allegations against the defendants had occurred.

“It is an abuse of process for a plaintiff to ask the court to perfect a fraud designed to cheat financially one’s spouse in divorce proceedings,” the judge said in reasons for judgment released Tuesday. “An exception does not exist where the defendant knew of and participated in the deception, even where the defendant will enjoy a windfall. The foregoing rule protects the administration of justice from being brought into disrepute. The court will not help to perfect a fraud.”

The judge added that while the defendant mother and brother may enjoy a windfall, the plaintiff’s former husband may now bring an action against the plaintiff, her mother and her brother.

Este made other claims, including that her estranged family members had sought to intimidate her as she brought her legal action, but the judge said she was the one who signed the deliberately false financial documents and gave false evidence at her divorce proceeding.

Reached for comment Tuesday, Este said she was disappointed in the ruling, maintained that there was no abuse of process, and said she is considering an appeal.

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A witness wept in court Wednesday as she described an incident in which her good friend was stabbed to death outside a Burnaby SkyTrain station.

Victoria Heard was testifying at the trial of Taitusi Vikilani, who has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter in the Feb. 15, 2015, killing of James Enright, 28.

She told B.C. Supreme Justice Paul Pearlman that the assault happened after she and Enright had driven from her home to the Edmonds SkyTrain station to meet a friend of hers.

After the friend arrived, she said she saw a shirtless man, who the Crown asserts was Vikilani, acting in an aggressive manner and hurling a racial slur — “f—ing goof-ass n—-r” — at three black men at the entrance to the station.

When she began using her iPhone to film the incident, the shirtless man and another man, who the Crown asserts was Vikilani’s co-accused Jesse Sellam, approached her vehicle and started yelling at her, she said.

Heard said she asked the shirtless man if he realized he was speaking to a girl and the man replied, “I don’t give a f— if you’re a girl,” before punching her in the face.

Enright, who was sitting in the passenger seat beside her, reached across to help her and then got out of the vehicle and went around the back of the car to confront the men, she said.

As she described how Enright was “just trying to protect” her, she broke down in tears. A court clerk handed her a box of Kleenex and she inhaled deeply before continuing her testimony.

Asked by Crown counsel Steven Black what happened next, she said that Enright and the shirtless man had exchanged “maybe a punch or two” before Enright looked stiff and ill and fell straight back, hitting his head on the pavement.

“I saw blood. I saw it coming from his nose. The shirtless man then stomped on James’s face. And that’s when I ran over to push him away because I could see he was going to do it again.”

Heard, who tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate Enright, said she learned that her friend had died while giving a statement to police.

In an opening statement delivered earlier, Black told the judge that Sellam, who had been at a house party with Vikilani prior to the incident, had stabbed Enright before the confrontation between Vikilani and the victim.

In December, Sellam was sentenced to 4-1/2 years in prison after pleading guilty to manslaughter. He had initially been charged with second-degree murder.

In his cross-examination, defence lawyer Patrick Beirne pointed out a number of inconsistencies between Heard’s testimony at trial and her testimony at a preliminary hearing.

He suggested that his client, who has also pleaded not guilty to assaulting Heard, had not in fact punched her, a suggestion that Heard denied. Beirne’s position is also that his client, who he said had consumed an excessive amount of alcohol at the house party, did not stomp on Enright.

The main issue at the trial, which is to run several weeks, is expected to be whether Vikilani was a party to the offence of manslaughter.

Related

• More dramatic testimony about fatal Kelowna gangland shooting
• Mother of convicted killer claims her son's case being investigated by Innocence Canada

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The much-delayed trial of four Mounties charged in connection with the Surrey Six murder investigation has been adjourned again for nearly six months — but the reason for the postponement can’t be reported because the matter is covered by a publication ban.

Following numerous prior adjournments, the trial of the accused had been set to get underway before a jury in B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver on Sept. 25, but has been moved back to March 5, 2018 after a brief court appearance by special prosecutor Christopher Considine and several defence lawyers Wednesday.

“The trial of this matter has been adjourned to allow for the completion of the appeal proceedings,” Dan McLaughlin, a Crown spokesman, said in an e-mail.

“The special prosecutor is seeking leave to appeal two decisions on this case, one from the trial court and one from the British Columbia Court of Appeal, to the Supreme Court of Canada.

“The issues under appeal are of significance to the trial process. The special prosecutor is not able to specify the legal issues involved as there are bans on publication in place.”

Trial delay has become a major issue for courts across Canada with the country’s highest court recently setting time limits on completion of court cases.

Asked whether he expects the case of the Surrey Six RCMP officers will see an application by the defence to have the charges stayed on the basis of an unreasonable delay getting to trial, McLaughlin said: “As the matter remains before the courts the special prosecutor will not be making any further comment or speculating on potential applications.”

Balmoral Towers in Surrey, where six men were shot to death in a 15th-floor apartment — the ‘Surrey Six murders’ — in October 2007.

In 2011, then-RCMP Sgt. Derek Brassington, Sgt. David Attew, Cpl. Paul Johnston and Cpl. Danny Michaud were charged with various offences related to their conduct of the investigation into B.C.’s biggest gangland slaying.

The case initially ran into difficulties when defence lawyers for the accused withdrew over a dispute involving who would pay for their legal bills.

The trial was first scheduled to start in September 2013, but was put over until September 2014, when it was again adjourned for a year. In September 2015, the case was put over until May 2016.

Brassington is charged with seven offences, including breach of trust, fraud, obstruction of justice and compromising the safety of a witness identified in the indictment only as Jane Doe. In May 2013, he resigned after being charged with theft in an unrelated prosecution.

Attew, who faces six counts, including falsifying overtime claims and compromising the safety of a witness, also resigned from the force.

Johnston and Michaud face four and three charges, respectively, including breach of trust, obstruction of justice and attempting to mislead investigators from the Ontario Provincial Police.

Johnston resigned from the force in June 2013. At the time of the last adjournment in May 2016, Michaud was suspended with pay. At press time, the Mounties had not responded to a request for any update on Michaud’s employment status.

Six men were shot to death in a 15th-floor apartment in the Balmoral Towers in Surrey in October 2007.

Two men have been convicted of first-degree murder and one man pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in connection with the slayings. A fourth man pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and a fifth accused pleaded guilty to helping the killers access the building.

In September last year, the Surrey Six murder trial of gang leader Jamie Bacon was adjourned until March 2018. The defence in Bacon’s case has filed a motion to have his charges stayed on the grounds of unreasonable delay.

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Related

• Real Scoop: Live updates from the Jonathan Bacon murder trial
• Accused killer Jamie Bacon’s Surrey Six trial delayed again
• Trial of Surrey Six investigators delayed for a year (from 2015)

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A former Port Coquitlam woman is at the centre of a fight for control of a New York businessman’s estate that is worth an estimated $75 million.

Court documents filed in Vancouver allege that Jane Ji Ting Burrows became involved in the life of Ralph William Burrows while his medical condition deteriorated from the prostate cancer that caused his death. The documents say that the couple got married in March 2014 at a “secretive” civil ceremony held at her house in B.C. less than five months before he died.

A trust was created in July 2014 purportedly to govern the disposition of the nearly $75 million in his assets, according to the documents.

“Under the trust’s terms, Bill purportedly disinherited his daughters, Ava and Audrey, and left the majority of his assets to Jane, a Canadian citizen who then resided in Port Coquitlam, B.C.,” says a petition filed in B.C. Supreme Court.

The petition, which was filed by the deceased’s former wife, Marcia Burrows, on behalf of the allegedly disinherited daughters, notes that probate proceedings in N.Y. are seeking to invalidate the trust on the grounds it was the product of undue influence by his surviving wife, duress or Burrows’s lack of “required capacity.”

The B.C. suit seeks to compel a Vancouver financial services firm that was involved in the deceased businessman’s estate planning to produce documents related to the case and to allow the petitioner’s lawyers to question an official with the firm. It says that the Vancouver firm — WaterStreet Family Offices, a subsidiary of Scotiabank — played an “integral role” in the estate planning, including the trust that was created in July 2014.

A letter from a Vancouver law firm representing WaterStreet that is attached to the petition claimed that a N.Y. court order dealing with the issue had no effect in B.C. A spokesman for the bank said in an email Thursday that he wasn’t sure they’d be able to provide much insight as the matter was before the courts.

According to an affidavit filed in N.Y. and attached to the petition, Jane gained control over her husband’s companies — that include Burrows Paper Corp., which operates four mills as well as five packaging facilities in the U.S., the Netherlands and China — during the final months of his life.

The affidavit says that Burrows remained in his log home on a large, isolated property far outside downtown Little Falls in the state of New York. Records produced by a hospice indicated that Jane, serving as his primary caregiver, was administering Roxanol, a liquid morphine, to her husband by syringes left in her custody, it says.

The affidavit was filed in response to a motion seeking to dismiss the probate proceedings. That motion claimed that the alleged undue influence contained “conclusory allegations,” without specific details.

An obituary describes Burrows, who died at age 64, as a “fourth-generation papermaker” who had worked at Burrows Paper Corp. from age 12. When he returned to Little Falls in 1974 after serving as a lieutenant in the U.S. Naval Reserve, he led the company in “hundredfold” growth, from positions including chairman, CEO and president, says the obituary. In addition to his wife, Burrows is survived by a son, four daughters and two granddaughters.

No date has been set for the hearing of the petition, which contains allegations that have not been tested in court. No response to the petition has yet been filed.

Neither Jane Ti Jing Burrows nor her lawyer in N.Y. could be reached for comment.

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A lawyer for a man accused of fatally shooting and then dismembering a West Vancouver businessman is arguing that statements his client made to police were not given voluntarily.

Ian Donaldson says a number of factors contributed to the confession of Li Zhao being involuntary, including that he was cold and hungry in the Vancouver city jail before the police interview.

“I’m not saying that freezing or starving him was deliberate,” Donaldson told B.C. Supreme Court Justice Terence Schultes. “I don’t have that burden. But I say it’s a circumstance which cannot be ignored in the delicate contextual inquiry upon which you are obliged to embark.”

Zhao, 56, has pleaded not guilty to the May 2015, second-degree murder of West Vancouver millionaire Gang Yuan, 42, and not guilty to interfering with a human body.

In a pretrial motion that began last month, Donaldson is seeking to have two statements to police that Zhao made in the days following his arrest ruled inadmissible.

During the police interviews, Zhao told Richmond RCMP Const. Wilson Yung that he had shot the victim outside Yuan’s British Properties home, dragged the body inside and then used a power saw to cut up the body.

On Friday, Donaldson told the judge that in addition to the conditions experienced by Zhao in the jail, the accused was not given a proper warning that he had the right to remain silent and that anything he said could be used as evidence against him in court.

“This particular warning was misleading, it was ineffective.” He said the circumstances amounted to an inducement for his client to speak to police.

Defence lawyer Ian Donaldson, who is representing the accused, Li Zhao. Zhao has pleaded not guilty to the second-degree murder of Gang Yuan.

But Crown counsel Kristin Bryson earlier argued that what went on in the police interview room is what is most important, and noted that there were no threats or promises made by police to the accused.

“While there’s no doubt that the conditions in the Vancouver jail that the accused in our case experienced for a number of hours on the afternoon of May 3 (2015) aren’t ideal, in the Crown’s submission they cannot be characterized as inhumane,” said Bryson.

“Certainly there’s no evidence to suggest that the conditions were in any way connected to the fact that the accused spoke to Const. Yung. Again, it’s clear that the accused wanted to speak in this case.”

Bryson told the judge that the accused had received legal advice that he shouldn’t speak to police and was given warnings about the fact that evidence could be used against him in court. She said Zhao was clearly an intelligent man and was animated and engaged in the police interview.

The key factor on the issue of voluntariness was whether the accused wanted to speak to police and it was “abundantly clear” that he did in fact wish to do so, said the prosecutor.

The case is expected to continue Monday with further arguments on the issue, including whether the accused’s Charter rights were violated in connection with his statements to police.

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A man who choked and sexually assaulted a woman who had been given the date-rape drug has been ordered released on bail pending his appeal of his conviction.

In December, a provincial court judge found Kenneth Edward Dixon, 45, guilty of sexually assaulting the victim, who can only be identified by the initials S.E. due to a publication ban, following an incident at his auto-repair shop on Nov. 28, 2014.

In the early morning hours Dixon had picked up the complainant at the request of Glen Bird, his co-accused, after Dixon had replaced Bird’s tires, which had been slashed earlier that evening.

The complainant, who was upset, afraid and wet, arrived at the shop and spent time with both men. Court heard that Dixon’s offence involved him choking her and forcing himself upon her despite her repeated attempts to stop him.

Dixon had earlier gone along with Bird administering to S.E. the drug GHB, a noxious substance commonly known as the date-rape drug.

The accused pleaded not guilty, claiming that he believed the victim had consented to sex, but the judge found Dixon guilty of one count of sexual assault and sentenced him to two years in prison. Bird was convicted of both sexual assault and administering GHB.

Dixon claims in his appeal that the judge made a number of errors, including finding that his statement to police was voluntary and for failing to adequately assist him during the trial.

He sought to be re-released on bail, arguing that he had previously abided by his terms of bail and that it would be unfair to keep him behind bars because if he wasn’t granted interim judicial release, he might serve out most of his jail term before the appeal could be heard.

The Crown opposed Dixon’s release on bail, arguing that the public confidence in the administration of justice would be undermined if he was allowed to be in the community.

In her ruling, B.C. Court of Appeal Justice Anne McKenzie noted that there were concerns about public safety as it was a serious offence and the facts of the crime were alarming.

Calling it a borderline case, she also found that there were no indicators that Dixon was a flight risk, that he has strong ties to the B.C. community where he lives and that the grounds of appeal were not frivolous.

“On balance, I am inclined to grant judicial interim release on the strict conditions which the Crown helpfully provided at the end of its submissions,” said the judge. ” … The strict conditions offset any remaining or extant concerns about the public confidence or public safety.”

The ruling, which was posted at the court’s website Monday, was given out orally last month.

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