Kidnapping charges stand despite long trial delays, Calgary judge rules
Four men charged in a Calgary kidnapping have failed in their bid to have the charges thrown out because of what they argued to be an unreasonable delay in getting the case to trial.
Lawyers for four men had tried to convince a judge to let their clients walk free on Monday, arguing the four-year delay from charge to trial was in violation of their clients' constitutional rights.
Hasson Wilson, Ivan Willis, Abraham Latife and Jamar Sterling are accused in a string of armed grocery store robberies, including one where a manager was kidnapped.
The arguments are being made as part of a Jordan application — named after a Supreme Court decision that puts hard timelines on what is considered an unreasonable delay for matters to get to trial.
Last year, the country's highest court put hard timelines of 18 months for provincial court matters and 30 months for Superior Court cases.
Delays beyond those time frames are "presumptively unreasonable" and violate an accused's charter right to be tried within a reasonable time, the decision said.
The trial, originally set for Oct. 3, 2016, was rescheduled in September and delayed a further 15 months at the defence lawyers' request, because they needed access to more of the evidence detailing the police and Crown's case against the accused.
More than 47 months will have passed between the arrests in February 2014 and the trial, now set for January 2018.
Court of Queen's Bench Justice Bryan Mahoney assigned 32 months and three weeks of delay to the Crown but also deemed the case a "complex" one, which allows for more leeway when considering whether the timeline to get to trial is an unreasonable one.
After a five-month investigation, dubbed Operation Volcom, the four were charged in several take-over style robberies where armed men would go into a store at closing time, order employees to the ground and then force one to open the safe inside.
In one of the cases, the manager of one of the grocery stores was kidnapped before the store was robbed.
The men are also charged with conspiracy because they are accused of planning a number of other robberies.
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