Wednesday May 6, 2015 - R. v. Munkonda, 2015 ONCA 309
It is not often that costs are awarded against the Crown, but in a case before the Ontario Court of Appeal dealing with language rights led to this decision.
The case initially dealt with an accused who was one of eight people charged criminally with trafficking cocaine. In the courts, it is possible to ask for proceedings to be conducted in either English or French; the accused, along with one co-accused, asked for French, with all parties involved agreeing to conduct the proceedings bilingually, so that the rights of all parties are respected.
However, there were multiple instances where their language requests were not held up; multiple notices served by the prosecution were not in French, even transcripts of conversations that had been held in French. Two prosecutors involved in the proceeding did not speak French at all, leading to the accused’s request that they be replaced, a request that was denied but the lead prosecutor was ordered to be bilingual. A request for a bilingual court reporter was also denied.
Following the preliminary hearing, where the accused was ordered to attend trial on two counts, trafficking and possession for the purposes of trafficking, the accused applied to the Superior Court for a stay of proceedings on the grounds of language rights violations.
Though the judge agreed that there had been language rights violations, they decided a stay of proceedings was not the correct response and did not order a remedy.
The Court of Appeal felt that a remedy should have been applied, and ordered one; in addition, the committal for trial was quashed.
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