Digest: R v Tingle, 2016 SKQB 212

Reported as: 2016 SKQB 212

Docket Number: QB17431, QBJ 3/13 JCS

Court: Court of Queen's Bench

Date: 2016-06-21

Judges:

• Danyliuk

Subjects:

• Criminal Law � Murder � First Degree
• Criminal Law � Murder � First Degree Murder �Vetrovec Warning

Digest: Three accused, T, L and D, were charged with first degree murder as being participants in a contract killing. A fourth individual, Y, was separately indicted and found guilty of first degree murder, but after appeal a new trial was ordered. The new trial had yet to take place. Evidence against Y was obtained through a Mr. Big sting operation, during which he made inculpatory statements about himself and the three accused. Y was called as the Crown�s first witness but refused to testify. At a voir dire, the court decided that the Mr. Big statements were necessary and reliable and, therefore, admissible. The Crown tendered evidence pertaining to the obtaining of the Mr. Big statements and evidence intended to confirm what Y said in those statements. Much of the Crown�s case relied upon the statements of Y and of two other witnesses.
HELD: The court found each accused not guilty. The evidence before the court, assessed as a whole, did not prove the crime alleged beyond a reasonable doubt. For the purposes of this trial, there was no doubt that Y was the person who shot and killed the victim. This was because he had been convicted prior to commencement of this trial and much of the evidence during this trial was given prior to his successful appeal. However, there were too many issues with the credibility and reliability of Y and other key Crown witnesses for the court to accept unconfirmed portions of their testimony. Each of those witnesses was subject to the Vetrovec warning. Key points of testimony were unsupported by any independent confirmatory evidence. Some statements could not be reconciled with evidence from the preliminary inquiry or with evidence of other witnesses. There were inconsistencies, issues with particulars, and prior inconsistent statements. Some evidence did not make sense in the context of physical evidence, eyewitness evidence, documentary evidence and expert opinion evidence. Many witness statements were demonstrably false and much evidence was replete with hearsay and unknown third-party sources of information. Almost seven years had passed between the events and the Mr. Big statements. While Y�s Mr. Big statements were perhaps self-incriminating, it did not necessarily follow that they incriminated the three accused, or any of them. All the evidence, taken together, supported beyond a reasonable doubt the existence of a conspiracy or common criminal enterprise, the object of which was to kill the...