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| Ron Dalton |
I am moved to speak out about the honour and dignity of accepting defeats and working honestly to overcome them by the Supreme Court of Canada decision released this past Friday in the case of Tammy Bouvette (R. v. Bouvette, 2025 SCC 18). The issue before the Supreme Court was whether the judicial stay of proceedings issued in the Court of Appeal should be dismissed and substituted with an outright acquittal. In this case the Crown conceded that it would not call any evidence should the matter come before the courts for a retrial. That concession would have mandated an acquittal, bringing the case to a definitive ending and completely removing the threat of further formal proceedings.
The Court of Appeal had previously ordered a new trial in the matter despite the Crown’s concession that it would call no evidence at such a retrial. Tammy Bouvette was facing the ordeal of another trial when the outcome was a foregone conclusion, and the judicial system was being asked to play out a farcical proceeding. Fortunately, the Supreme Court saw the inherent injustice in the suggested action and entered the acquittal, bringing Tammy’s ordeal to a conclusive end. In so doing it highlighted the general weaknesses of judicial stays of proceedings and put a spotlight on the often unfair advantage given to the Crown in continuing unwarranted prosecutions.
Some 37 years ago, I was embroiled in the workings of the criminal justice system. While my own case did not involve the use of stay of proceedings provisions, the volunteer advocacy work I have undertaken during the past 25 years has shown me the impact it often has on wrongful conviction cases. Too often the Crown will enter, or attempt to enter, a stay of proceedings in cases that have imploded under the scrutiny of a wrongful conviction investigation.
In many such cases, the rationale for such a position appears to have more to do with a refusal to accept defeat honourably and less to do with the interests of justice. By attempting to keep alive some suggestion that an individual may be barely beyond the strictures of guilt not only taints the individual’s reputation but does similar harm to the administration of justice. Experience has taught me that we should honour the power of mistakes to teach us all how much more we can learn from them rather than from the disgrace of trying to irrationally defy the facts.
In my own case, I spent 12 years between my arrest and eventual acquittal, often with little more than the truth to support and comfort me, but I would not bow to the superior force of the Crown and admit to something I had not done. Tammy Bouvette spent a similar period awaiting the acquittal she received last Friday from the Supreme Court of Canada. While she was not incarcerated during most of that period, she was under the cloud of public suspicion. Even the acquittals we received will not entirely remove the public cloud under which we live. There can be no justification for the imposition of a stay of proceedings once it has been clearly established the Crown no longer holds any possibility of retrying her.
The decision in the Bouvette case is not only important for Tammy, but it should also serve to inform other courts currently considering similar situations where wrongly convicted individuals are under threat of baseless stays. I know of several instances in this country where stays of proceedings are being contemplated in cases where wrongful convictions appear to have occurred. In those cases, the wrongly convicted individuals are entitled to the finality of an acquittal and should not be held hostage by the threat of a stay. Some of the cases currently under review are over a quarter of a century old, and the application of a judicial stay of proceedings would only serve to exacerbate the injustice visited upon innocent fellow citizens.
As a nation that respects the rule of law, we owe it to ourselves and each other to accept graciously the inevitable mistakes our fallible justice system makes. The overuse of judicial stays affords an unacceptable opportunity to extend the cloud of suspicion over individuals who have already suffered too much and can only serve to weaken our collective faith in our system of justice.
In 1988, Ron Dalton was a 32-year-old bank manager when he was wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife. It took the next 12 years to prove his innocence, restore his freedom and return him to his family, including the couple’s three children. Since that ordeal, Dalton has tried to reintegrate into family life and earn a living, and he is co-chair of Innocence Canada, a nonprofit organization working to free other wrongly convicted individuals.
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