Sex charge stayed after bungled prosecution

After losing his job, his reputation, and the price of three fruitless plane trips between Nova Scotia and Nunavut, David Wiseman will not get his day in court.

Wiseman, a former Arctic College instructor in Cambridge Bay, was arrested in April 26, 2004 and charged with a summary conviction sexual assault. The complainant is an adult woman from Cambridge Bay.

But after a year-long comedy of errors involving the Crown, the RCMP and at least two no-show witnesses, the Nunavut Court of Justice has stayed the charge.

In a judgement issued last week, Justice Earle Johnson found that Crown prosecutors violated Wiseman’s Charter-guaranteed right to a trial within a reasonable period of time.

“In this prosecution, the judicial system did not function well and the applicant was seriously prejudiced as a result,” Johnson said in his judgement.

Johnson found that the Crown and the RCMP was mostly, but not entirely, responsible for causing Wiseman’s trial to be postponed four times.

The first trial postponement, on Sept. 13, 2004 was caused by the Crown’s failure to disclose evidence to defence lawyers before the start of the trial.

The second postponement, on Nov. 9, 2004, was caused by a failure on the part of the RCMP and Crown to ensure the attendance of a key Crown witness.

The third postponement, on Jan. 17, 2005, was ordered because the court ran out of time during its sitting in Cambridge Bay that week.

The fourth postponement, on March 15, 2005, was ordered because another Crown witness, an RCMP member, had problems with a plane ticket from Yellowknife to Cambridge Bay.

And at around the same time, Wiseman and his lawyer learned of two other witnesses whose names were not disclosed to them.

One gave a statement to the police, while the other, a GN employee, had been ordered by the GN’s lawyers not to talk to anyone about Wiseman’s charges. Johnson said in his judgement that had they known about the GN witness earlier, the court could have ordered the police to take a statement from him so that the statement could be given to the defence.

On March 16, after all those foul-ups threatened further delays to Wiseman’s trial, defence lawyer Peter Harte filed an application to have the sexual assault charge stayed on the grounds that Wiseman’s charter rights had been violated by the various postponements, and by the Crown’s failure to disclose crucial evidence.

After that, a hearing to try the application was also delayed, because a defence lawyer was sick, and because the court had difficulty finding time to conduct it.

“In my opinion, the case at bar is one of those cases where the integrity of the judicial system was violated,” Johnson said.