Drunk-driving case tossed twice on technicality

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This article was published 27/04/2016 (2917 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A suspected drunk driver who blew over the legal limit has walked free based on a bizarre legal technicality.

Stanley Fryza was arrested in December 2009 during a Christmas checkstop as he left the Marion Hotel. He produced blood-alcohol readings of .11 and .13. He was convicted at trial in March 2011 of driving over .08 based on those readings in what seemed like an open-and-shut case.

Instead, it has turned into a lengthy legal battle.

Fryza’s lawyer immediately appealed after discovering a glitch in the evidence: a certificate of analysis on Fryza’s breathalyzer results had been photocopied by the arresting officer. In the process, the copy given to the defence was missing part of the text that was inadvertently cut off. This included a single digit of the “lot number of the alcohol standard” used in the testing process.

Although the evidence was stamped “Certified True Copy,” the duplicate wasn’t an exact match with the original.

Police told court it was an “innocent shifting of the paper” that caused the error and they didn’t realize it until it was too late. The Crown said it didn’t change the strong evidence against Fryza, as the original document clearly shows the accurate test results.

However, a Court of Queen’s Bench justice disagreed, saying “an essential part of the certificate of analysis” had been altered in the disclosure process. The judge ruled the only remedy was to throw out the conviction and try the case again.

And that’s where things really get strange.

Fryza went on trial for a second time, with the same result. However, the arresting officer never took the step of serving Fryza or his lawyer with the proper paperwork, instead relying on the same flawed document that had previously caused the legal headaches.

As a result, the conviction has been tossed once again. And this time, the Court of Queen’s Bench says there will be no further chances — they have entered an acquittal to avoid what they say would be an abuse of process.

“It would be grossly unfair and prejudicial to the accused to order a third trial,” wrote Justice Doug Abra in a decision released this week. He called it “ridiculous” that the police officer didn’t do what was required to avoid having this happen again.

The officer, Sgt. Rob Riffel, told court he couldn’t access the original document to make a proper copy because it was locked in the court office following the first botched trial.

“At no time did Sergeant Riffel attend the court office in an attempt to make a copy of the Certificate of Analysis. Furthermore, apparently Sergeant Riffel did not make any request of the Crown’s office to get an order that the Certificate of Analysis be released from the court in order that it could be copied,” said Abra.

Without a proper certificate of analysis accepted by the court, Abra said there is no evidence of what the accused’s readings were and there is no choice but to set him free.

www.mikeoncrime.com