A B.C. Supreme Court judge has thrown out key evidence in a Castlegar drug trafficking case, ruling that police violated the accused’s Charter rights when a search warrant was executed in 2021.
Justice Lindsay Lyster ruled that the RCMP officer who obtained the warrant for Andrew Lee Cancela’s home in April 2021 misled the judge who issued it by exaggerating evidence and failing to disclose critical facts.
Lyster delivered her oral ruling in Nelson on Sept. 22, but it wasn’t published on the B.C. Supreme Court website until Wednesday.
According to the decision, Const. Andrew Bachmann of the Castlegar RCMP detachment was granted a warrant to search Cancela’s home on April 21, 2021.
The search uncovered 222 grams of cocaine and more than $78,000 in cash. Cancela was arrested and charged with possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking. A woman was also arrested.
Cancela’s lawyers argued the evidence should be excluded, claiming it violated his Section 8 Charter rights, which protect against unreasonable search and seizure.
While Cancela still faces charges that carry potential life sentences, Lyster found that admitting improperly obtained evidence would cause greater harm to the justice system than allowing the case to collapse.
“Admitting the unconstitutionally obtained evidence would bring the administration of justice into disrepute,” Lyster wrote in her ruling. “The greater societal interest is to ensure the long-term repute of the administration of justice.”
Lyster said Const. Bachmann overstated the strength of the case to the issuing judge by exaggerating the results of police surveillance and by failing to disclose that certain claims made by confidential informants could not be verified.
That included a claim that Cancela was the “biggest cocaine dealer in Castlegar,” and that the woman arrested at the home worked for him.
Lyster said Bachmann was honest under cross-examination that he had been unable to corroborate those statements, but that information was not disclosed in the warrant application.
She said the omission was misleading, even if unintentional.
“Had this court not granted leave to the applicant to cross-examine Cst. Bachmann, no one would ever have known that those assertions could not be corroborated,” Lyster wrote.
“While I do not find that Cst. Bachmann intended to deceive the authorizing justice, I find that this non-disclosure of material facts was misleading in effect.”
Lyster also found that surveillance evidence was presented in a misleading way.
While Bachmann claimed that daily drug trafficking activity had been observed at the residence, surveillance occurred on only 13 days over more than a month, and Cancela was seen only twice.
“There were days where no behaviour consistent with drug trafficking was observed,” Lyster said.
“Cst. Bachmann’s statement of belief exaggerated the strength of the evidence that Mr. Cancela was involved in drug trafficking, and significantly exaggerated the strength of the evidence that he was doing so on a daily basis.”
Lyster acknowledged the seriousness of the charges but said protecting Charter rights and maintaining trust in the justice system must take precedence.
“These were not the only bases upon which I held that the warrant could not have been issued, and thus that Mr. Cancela’s s. 8 rights were infringed,” she said.
“The court must balance and weigh the various and competing interests. Having done so in the case at bar, I have concluded that admitting the unconstitutionally obtained evidence would bring the administration of justice into disrepute.”
Lyster said she expects the exclusion to effectively end the case against Cancela, as the drugs and cash seized from his home formed the majority of the Crown’s evidence.
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