The case against a former Prince George schoolteacher charged with sex crimes against former students has been thrown out due to an unreasonable delay in getting the matter to trial.
In January 2011, a 66-year-old man, who is now being identified only by the initials JHT due to a publication ban, was charged with six sex-related offences.
JHT, a former gym teacher and basketball coach at D.P. Todd secondary school, was alleged to have had inappropriate interactions with two female students during the 1980s.
The RCMP investigation, which was launched after the complainants came forward, resulted in JHT being suspended with pay in September 2009 while he was employed as a teacher in the Surrey school district.
In May 2013, JHT went on trial in B.C. Supreme Court, but several months later a mistrial was declared following the testimony of a Crown witness.
After a series of delays, including several change-of-venue applications, the date for the second trial was set for January 2017.
Before the trial could begin, JHT sought a stay of proceedings on the grounds that serious RCMP misconduct had caused him significant prejudice and that there had been a 73.4 month delay between the laying of the charges and the scheduled completion of the trial.
The accused argued that the delay was 43.4 months in excess of a 30-month trial-delay limit for such cases set by the Supreme Court of Canada in a ruling released last summer, and represented a violation of his right to a trial within a reasonable time.
He said that the mistrial declared in the case was not an exceptional circumstance that would warrant delay and argued that it was not a complex case.
In his ruling in the case, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Ronald Tindale dismissed JHT's claim that a police error in saying the victims were 13 instead of 14 would leave the impression that he was a pedophile, since the age of consent at the time was 14 years.
"Quite frankly I cannot see how it would have made any difference whether the complainants were 13 or 14 years of age given that the allegations are of a teacher being charged with sexually related offences against former students."
But while the judge dismissed the allegation of RCMP misconduct, he agreed that there had been an unreasonable delay.
Tindale noted that there was no evidence from the Crown that they had developed and followed a concrete plan to minimize the delay occasioned by any complexity.
"The Crown has failed to show that the complexity of the trial is an exceptional circumstance because they have not shown that the circumstances were outside of their control."
The judge found that the mistrial in the case was attributable to the Crown, because the questioning of the prosecution witness revealed "inadmissible discreditable-conduct evidence," namely that JHT beat up the witness when she attended a college.
In directing a stay of proceedings, Tindale concluded that there were 40 1/2 months of delay, far exceeding what was reasonable and that there were concrete examples of prejudice to JHT, including his suspension from his job.
His ruling was given out orally in December and released online earlier this week.
The ruling is one of a series of trial-delay cases that have hit B.C. courts since the ruling by Canada's highest court last July.
In December, the federal Public Prosecution Service of Canada told Postmedia News that it had had 17 applications to stay charges in B.C. owing to delays. B.C.'s Criminal Justice Branch said that it did not track such cases involving provincial prosecutions.
