Judge pressures jury for quick verdict in child sexual assault case
Appeal court overturns the conviction, orders new trial
The Nunavut Court of Appeal overturns a decision by a Rankin Inlet jury due to pressure from a judge. (File photo by Daron Letts)
A Nunavut judge wrongfully put “pressure” on a Rankin Inlet jury to come to a quick verdict in a sexual assault trial, the territory’s Court of Appeal found.
“If you can’t reach a decision tonight, you can’t reach a decision; this will be the end of it,” Justice Christian Lyons told the jury on Oct. 3, 2024, during Arsene Kaput’s trial. “Knuckle under a little and go back to it and really see if you can come to a verdict.”
On Monday, the appeal court released its decision to overturn the jury’s conviction of Kaput, who was accused of sexually assaulting a child over a five-year period in Taloyoak. The complainant was two to four years old at the time of the alleged incidents. Kaput later faced two more charges for alleged assaults in Rankin Inlet when the complainant was around seven years old.
Kaput faced a jury trial in October 2024 in a Rankin Inlet community hall. The jury was selected on Oct. 1, and the court was set to leave Rankin Inlet by airplane at 4 p.m. on Oct. 4. There was no option to reschedule the flight and no extra hotel rooms at that time, the decision reads.
Jurors can legally take as long as they need to come to a verdict, but they are unable to go home until that decision is made. So normally, if deliberations take longer than one day, jurors are given hotel rooms to stay overnight.
But on Oct. 3 at around 2 p.m., Lyons informed the jury there were no hotel rooms available, so they would need to come to a decision by the end of the day.
At around 8 p.m., the jury asked to stop the deliberations and carry on the next day, but Lyons didn’t allow it, saying “at a certain point, you know, if you can’t come to a verdict I will put an end to it.”
Two hours later, the jury came back with a guilty verdict on the charges that stemmed from Kaput’s time in Taloyoak.
The court of appeal deemed the jury’s decision “unsafe,” as the deliberations were not free of “extraneous pressure,” justices Karen Wenckebach, April Grosse and Tamara Friesen wrote in their decision.
Kaput has been released and is set to appear in the Nunavut Court of Justice on June 8 to schedule a new trial.
This wasn’t a harmless procedural mistake. A judge’s lack of judgment has now cost taxpayers the expense of a second trial, consumed countless hours of court time, and forced witnesses to relive painful events all over again.
Most importantly, it places an additional burden on the complainant, who now faces the prospect of testifying again because the Court of Appeal found the jury’s verdict was tainted by improper pressure. Justice isn’t just about reaching a verdict, it’s about ensuring that verdict is reached fairly and can withstand scrutiny. When a judge fails in that responsibility, victims, communities, and the public all pay the price.
Given the consequences of this error, the public deserves more than silence. There should be some form of accountability and acknowledgment of the harm caused when a judicial mistake results in a conviction being overturned, a victim being retraumatized, and significant public resources being wasted.
The judge was between a rock and a hard place.There are some standard phrases a judge uses to encourage a jury to continue deliberating, as in, “you know the case better than any other citizens and you are the ones best able to come to a decision” etc.
His problem was the lack of hotel rooms to house the jury overnight.
In the American system, jurors can be released to go home and return the next day. In Canada, the law requires the judge to keep the jurors together and with no outside communication until they have a verdict.
If the judge sounded frustrated, it was likely because he feared exactly this outcome. A deadlocked jury would also result in a mistrial and the need for a new trial.
Justice Lyons is a knowledgeable and conscientious judge, who is not given to extreme statements in court. He is courteous and restrained in his dealings with the people who appear before him. He was undoubtedly also concerned about the jurors’ situation as the deliberations continued into the evening.
He needed to advise the jury that the process was going to end soon if there was no verdict, since the jurors would also have reasonable questions about what would happen that evening and night.
The Court of Appeal has ruled that his statement crossed the line into pressuring the jury and that decision will be respected by the NCJ judges.
The bigger issue here is the ability of Nunavut communities to support jury trials, given the current resources in the Hamlets and the large number of jury elections in small communities.
Ok. I’ll face off on the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room that everyone is ignoring: Why wasn’t the trial held in the home community of Talayoak where all of the jurors lived? Problem solved. Eight hundred pound gorilla measured and answered.
Probably for the same reason the judge found himself in this situation in the first place: a shortage of accommodations. Unfortunately, logistical challenges don’t excuse an error that ultimately resulted in a conviction being overturned.
I would argue the biggest issue is the additional burden placed on the complainant. The cost of a new trial and the lack of accommodations in Nunavut are legitimate concerns, but they are secondary to the fact that a victim may now have to relive traumatic events and go through the entire court process again.
Also, the statement about the American system isn’t universally true. Some U.S. jurisdictions allow jurors to go home during deliberations, while others sequester juries depending on the circumstances. It’s also not relevant regardless, and only serves as a deflection.
As for “Justice Lyons is a knowledgeable and conscientious judge,” that may well be true. However, the Court of Appeal still found that his comments crossed the line and improperly pressured the jury. A judge can be experienced, well-intentioned, and generally respected, and still make a serious error in a particular case.
I agree your final point has merit. Nunavut’s infrastructure challenges clearly create difficulties for the courts. But I highly doubt that when the complainant learned the conviction had been overturned and a new trial ordered, their first thought was, “The real tragedy here is the shortage of hotel rooms.” The human impact on the complainant should remain the primary concern.
This was meant as a reply to Liberty of the Subject.
It’s clear the judge was trying to avoid a new trial and further trauma to the victim. The jury could not be sequestered. If they were not coming to a decision the same day, there would have been a mistrial and everything would have had to be redone.
It sounds like the judge had fully understood the impact of a new trial on the people involved in it. Maybe an error in law, but probably made because he was trying hard to avoid a new trial.
Beware, the attention grabbing title of this article is misleading. Please go read the decision for yourself.