Judge rules police meth search unlawful

Three people accused by Winnipeg police of selling methamphetamine and illegally possessing firearms were acquitted in provincial court Thursday after a judge ruled the search used to secure evidence in the case was unlawful.

Winnipeg Police Service tactical officers arrested Jesse Troy John Lafreniere, 38, Kaya Rose Ramsay, 26, and Thomas Thong Lee, 38, after executing two search warrants on March 23 last year at about 10:30 p.m. at a home on Aberdeen Avenue, where the three were found in the kitchen.

Police also discovered an unspecified quantity of meth, multiple firearms, stolen property and drug-trafficking paraphernalia inside the home.

Each was charged with possession of methamphetamine for the purpose of trafficking and possessing the proceeds of crime, as well as several offences for firearms possession and the possession of property obtained by crime.

But provincial court Judge Catherine Carlson ruled on Thursday that their rights under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms had been violated and she acquitted them.

Carlson’s ruling came after she said, in two written decisions, that all the evidence seized was found during improperly obtained and executed search warrants, violating their rights. She also found that Ramsay’s statement to police was not compliant with the Charter.

That made the evidence inadmissible at trial.

“In this case, the admission of the evidence would bring the administration of justice into disrepute,” Carlson wrote. She added that the multiple Charter breaches were “serious.”

Crown prosecutor Minh Nguyen elected not to call further evidence in the gutted case, leading Carlson to enter the acquittals.

Lafreniere’s lawyer Carley Mahoney, Lee’s lawyer Adam Hodge and Ramsay’s lawyer Matthew Raffey had all filed applications seeking court orders deeming the warrants — one under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and the other under the Criminal Code — as constitutionally invalid.

The orders sought for Carlson to declare the searches, if invalid, as unlawful and contrary to the Charter right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, meaning all evidence from the search should be excluded from trial.

The applications said that the information to obtain — a court document written by police to apply for warrants — and the warrant itself did not properly lay out what criminal offences were being investigated.

Carlson said that although careless, those errors didn’t give her sufficient reason to find the warrant shouldn’t have been authorized.

The three accused also argued both warrants improperly purported to authorize police to execute the two warrants at night — but criminal warrants are only authorized to be executed at night if a court justice deems it reasonable, after a request by police, in exceptional circumstances.

“A search warrant executed at night without justification is a serious Charter breach,” said Carlson.

“The rationale for this is clear. People have a high expectation of privacy in their residences at night, and in feeling that they will be safe and left alone by the state in their homes during the night.”

The police applying for the criminal warrant made no request to search at night, Carlson noted. The warrant was active for three days, meaning it did not need to be executed after sunset.

There was no suggestion in the warrant application that the items being searched for would be moved or not found if the search was conducted during the day, she said, deeming the criminal warrant unlawfully authorized and a breach of the Charter.

She said the night-time search was “an extremely troublesome matter,” as police capitalized on an error made by the justice who issued the warrant.

“(Police) ought to have known they could not execute it at night. That action shows total disregard for the charter rights of whoever was in the residence,” said Carlson.

Although drug warrants are allowed under law to authorize searches at any time, Carlson found that warrant also wasn’t validly issued, so it too violated the charter.

Further, the three accused argued, both informations to obtain did not contain sufficient information to establish reasonable and probable grounds to believe the evidence police sought would be found at the home when the warrants were to be executed.

The judge decided information on Lafreniere’s alleged drug dealing and possession of stolen property,provided to police by confidential informants and used to argue there were reasonable grounds for a search, was lacking.

Carlson wrote that the reputation of the administration of justice is bigger than one case.

“The public has to see that charter-breaching conduct that empowers state agents to enter and search someone’s residence without having the requisite reasonable grounds, and especially to do so at night without justification therefore, will not be sanctioned, even if, as in this case, evidence of serious criminality is located as a result of such a search,” she wrote.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca