
A Penticton man's bid to get drugs seized from his vehicle excluded from his upcoming trial has been shot down by a judge, despite acknowledging minor Charter of Rights breaches during the arrest.
In a recently published decision, Justice Kathleen Ker rejected the request from James Ryan Jeeves, who is charged with three counts of possession for the purpose of trafficking stemming from an April 16, 2020 in Penticton relating to fentanyl, cocaine and methamphetamine found during a traffic stop.
Ker wrote that the initial stop, which was to verify ownership of the vehicle, by an RCMP constable was valid, but that it "immediately transformed into a criminal investigation" when another constable arrived and was pointed towards a collapsible baton on the ground.
"While I found that [the constable] had subjective grounds to detain Mr. Jeeves for possession of a weapon, when the totality of the circumstances was considered, the objective reasonableness of [the constable's] grounds were lacking," Ker wrote.
"I found that the officer was simply acting upon a hunch. Believing he had the requisite grounds to detain and arrest the accused, [the constable] then searched the vehicle."
The search proved fruitful, turning up quantities of illegal drugs.
"Society has a significant interest in seeing the adjudication of cases involving these drugs, particularly fentanyl. It is beyond dispute that this province remains in the grips of an opioid crisis; illegal drugs are a persistent and serious problem in our communities," Ker wrote.
Ker acknowledged that multiple breaches of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms took place, but that none were egregious enough to outweigh the overall importance of the drugs being admitted as evidence.
She wrote that Jeeves' detention was "not objectively reasonable in the circumstances," that there was a breach of privacy stemming from that arrest during the search of the vehicle, and that there was a slight delay of minutes in Jeeves being informed as to why he had been detained.
But she found that overall, those breaches were not egregious enough to outweigh the overall importance of the drugs being admitted as evidence, citing society's interest in the adjudication of the case given the ongoing drug crisis.
"The evidence in question is highly reliable physical evidence that is vital to the Crown’s case. Indeed, the Crown has no case if it is excluded. The evidence was obtained without conscription or any interference with Mr. Jeeves’s dignity or bodily integrity," Ker wrote.
"I have concluded that the impugned police conduct in this case falls between the lower and mid range on the scale of seriousness. The officers were not acting capriciously or in a groundless manner."
She added, while citing legal precedent, that it was a "dynamic and rapidly evolving situation" which made it understandable, in her view, that the constables on scene might "[fall] short of a legal standard that is not always easy to recognize in the moment of the circumstances like this case."
Jeeves' motion to have the drugs deemed inadmissible was dismissed, and the evidence will be allowed at trial.