Client charged with 2 counts of second degree murder and was the target of an RCMP “Mr. Big” undercover operation. Crown invited a dismissal of the murder charges following a ruling that evidence obtained during the Mr. Big operation was inadmissible. Client was 14 years of age when initially charged with the murders and 16 years of age when the Mr. Big operation began. During the course of the operation the client provided multiple statements where he admitted to committing the murders; the statements were inconsistent with each other and the evidence found at the murder scene. Defence argued that evidence obtained during the Mr. Big operation should be excluded because: the operation violated the client’s s.7 right to not incriminate himself, the operation was an abuse of process, and that admission of the evidence would be a breach of trial fairness.
Held: The evidence obtained during the Mr. Big operation was excluded.
The client was particularly vulnerable to the Mr. Big operation, he would have believed he had arrived in heaven and would not risk walking away from the operation to the hell represented by his life away from the operation, and there was a very real and strong prospect that the statements were unreliable. Admission of evidence obtained during the operation would give rise to a real and serious possibility of abusive conduct by the state due to: the police breaching the law by giving a minor alcohol, it being entirely predictable that the undercover operation may further psychologically damage an already psychologically damaged youth, the police designing the Mr. Big operation by using information obtained by the client reporting that he had been the victim of sexual exploitation, and the police encouraging the client to continue to participate in a sexually exploitive relationship.