Application for a stay under 24(1) on the basis of unreasonable delay. Complex procedural history, including initial acquittal, successful Crown appeal, and order for a retrial. Issue of how the 18-month Jordan presumptive ceiling should be applied in the case of a retrial.
Held: No s 11(b) breach.
Pre-Jordan, delay “clock” stopped at acquittal, but if a new trial was ordered, calculation included pre-trial delay as well as delay after the new trial order: Barros, 2014 ABCA 367. Post-Jordan, Barros “cannot be stretched to act as authority for the proposition that the current 18 month presumptive ceiling…is meant to include the completion of both the first trial and any subsequent trial”, and only suggests that appellate delay is not counted. Appellate courts must set second trial ‘ceiling’. However, retrials do not require all of the time-consuming steps of an initial trial, so “the full period represented by the presumptive ceiling should not be required for the second trial”.
G. Dunn – Defence Counsel