The B.C. Court of Appeal has dismissed a Prince George man's bid to have his drug-related convictions overturned.
Keith Christopher Lundy was sentenced in November 2021 to a further two years and one month in jail for possessing a mixture of deadly opioids as well as cocaine for the purpose of trafficking.
He appealed the convictions that led to the sentencing on the claim that the judge who found him guilty erred by declining to exclude evidence she concluded was gathered in breach of his Charter rights. Contrary to the judge's finding, the infringement was enough to bring the administration of justice into disrepute, Lundy's lawyer, Jason LeBlond had argued in the appeal.
But in a decision issued March 17, BCCA Justice Leonard Marchand found that Lundy's rights had in fact not been violated. Rather, Marchand determined that the judge had erred in taking the evidence in piecemeal fashion, rather than in its totality and on that basis, RCMP's grounds for arresting Lundy were "objectively reasonsable."
Marchand also went on to find that had Lundy's rights been violated, he agreed with the judge that the infringement would not have been serious enough to warrant excluding the evidence police had gathered during the investigation.
No "palpable and overriding errors in the judge’s findings of fact," were uncovered by Lundy's counsel, Marchand found.
Acting on a tip, Prince George RCMP conducted a roughly week-long surveillance of Lundy in February 2019. He was arrested and had remained in custody ever since.
In February 2022, Lundy was sentenced for possessing a "Stinger" grenade and an illegally-modified rifle, uncovered during an October 2020 arrest. Time on that matter ran concurrently to that issued for the drug convictions.
