Firm Secures Stay of Proceedings After Complex Rights & Treaty Trial for Two Indigenous Clients, with Superior Court Recognition of Host of Treaties & New Aboriginal Rights Test

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Because it’s our duty to protect our clients’ privacy, I don’t usually post about cases where we’ve been successful in securing the exoneration of clients. However, as our clients chose to make this a test case and have extensively publicly spoken about it, I’m posting about the important Quebec Superior Court criminal decision of R. v. Derek White & Hunter Montour, decided just a few days ago on 1 November 2023 by the Honourable Justice Sophie Bourque.

There can be many paths to being exonerated in criminal proceedings, some lengthier and unfortunately more resource-intensive than others. To secure exoneration here against Excise Act charges, where the Crown was seeking many years imprisonment, ultimately a constitutional test case needed to be created. Seven years later, the Quebec Superior Court stayed all charges our clients were facing.

You can read the mammoth 440 page decision here: https://coursuperieureduquebec.ca/fileadmin/cour-superieure/Jugements_diffuses_sur_X/R._c._White_et_Montour.pdf

A lot of things need to align for any successful criminal trial decision (all of which happened here):

  1. the right issue(s);

  2. the right clients;

  3. the right evidence;

  4. sufficient resources;

  5. the right trial judge.

Few judges would have taken 20 (!) months to draft a decision like this. Her Honour Justice Sophie Bourque is the senior criminal judge on the Montreal Quebec Superior Court. She announced during our court appearance on 1 November 2023 that this would be her last major judgment, as she is retiring in December. It’s unfortunate that others in the future won’t further benefit from her wisdom.

The lesson for all those facing criminal proceedings is that you deserve a unique defence tailored to your specific circumstances, where you may need both patience and resources to see that defence through to its conclusion. There can never be any guarantees of success, however there are many ways in which to maximize criminal defence prospects of success, which in this case required a very significant team effort of lawyers and expert witnesses in order to give the court a sufficient legal and factual foundation to make the findings that it did.