A statement from one of BC’s top judges warns that people facing BC Supreme Court trials in Williams Lake, Smithers and several other communities could be released from custody due to logistical challenges.
“It may not be possible for criminal trials to proceed as scheduled if the accused person is in custody and the courthouse is distant from the nearest pre-trial correctional centre,” wrote Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes.
In an April 30 notice, Holmes said the RCMP and other local police forces stopped keeping defendants in custody in police cells during trials last year because they no longer had adequate staffing or space.
The other courthouses affected include Cranbrook, Dawson Creek, Fort St. John, Nelson, Powell River, Prince Rupert, Revelstoke, Rossland and Terrace.
Previously, defendants could be held in local cells if travel between the nearest provincial jail and courthouse could be managed twice weekly. For longer trials, accused persons were returned to jail each weekend.
One workaround has been chartering aircraft to shuttle defendants between jails and courthouses on a daily basis. But when charter flights are unavailable, provincial officials and police are now seeking a province-wide interim solution. Holmes said she does not know when a long-term fix will be in place.
“Until those arrangements are in place, it is necessary to hold a case management conference for each potentially affected case to determine whether it will be possible during the trial to house the in-custody accused person in the community of the trial, or to transport the accused person daily from and to the correctional centre,” Holmes wrote.
Holmes directed Crown and defence lawyers to contact scheduling clerks three months before a trial to arrange case management conferences. Options could include adjourning trials until arrangements are available, moving proceedings closer to a provincial jail or, in some cases, releasing accused persons from custody.
The notice came seven weeks after a BC Provincial Court judge rejected an application by a man accused of second-degree murder in Smithers to move his case to Prince George.
Sylvester Gordon Joseph’s lawyers told Judge Gregory Brown that, as of last November, the RCMP had stopped detaining accused persons at the Smithers detachment. As a result, Joseph would be transported from Prince George to Smithers each morning for court and flown back after proceedings.
Joseph estimated he would be waking before 6 a.m. daily and not returning to his cell until after 7:30 p.m., close to lockdown. He is on medication for ADHD and Suboxone, an anti-opioid medication, and has expressed anxiety about flying.
“The flight time is over an hour to 90 minutes each way,” Brown said in his March 12 decision. “The Crown says it is less, but that does not include transport time from Prince George Regional Correctional Centre to Prince George Airport, or transfer time from Smithers Airport to the Smithers courthouse.”
Brown said justice should be conducted locally whenever possible and noted that moving the trial would delay proceedings by several months.
His ruling also emphasized timing constraints, noting the 30-month ceiling for the case under a 2016 Supreme Court of Canada decision is March 2027.
