A BC Supreme Court judge is scheduled to issue a decision June 3 on whether to stay Brendan Tomas Boylan’s November’s sexual assault charge.
Boylan was charged in November 2020 and tried intermittently between April 2023 and September 2024. At issue was a sexual encounter that began with mutual consent. The victim, who lived with Boylan in 2018, testified that he ignored her pleas to stop. Instead, she told the court, he held her down on the bed, forcibly continued and caused her to be injured.
Boylan denied the allegations, but Justice Simon Coval found his testimony “implausible, not credible and untruthful” and deemed him guilty beyond reasonable doubt last Nov. 20.
During three days in Prince George and two days in Vancouver, Boylan contested Coval’s verdict on the grounds that his constitutional right to a timely trial was violated. Submissions concluded on schedule May 1 at the Law Courts in Vancouver, so the May 29 continuation in Prince George is not needed.
Boylan’s trial lawyer was Jon Duncan, but he represented himself with assistance from Duncan associate Hazem Osso.
Boylan argued that the time period from the charge to the end of his trial was 46 months and nine days, which far exceeds the 30-month presumptive ceiling for a case in BC Supreme Court, as set by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2016.
Prosecutor John Cliffe rebutted Boylan’s arguments, by quoting from court transcripts about scheduling and delays. Cliffe reminded Coval of the defence decision to move the trial from Provincial Court to B.C. Supreme Court and to file numerous applications that added to the delays.
Coval has scheduled Sept. 8-10 as tentative dates for sentencing, should Boylan’s application fail.
After the November conviction, Boylan was listed in the BC. government online registry of teachers as having signed an undertaking not to practice “pending resolution of a matter before the commissioner or a hearing panel under Part 6 of the Teachers Act.”
