The Prince George teacher found guilty of sexual assault in late 2024 lost his bid Tuesday, June 3 to stay the charge against him on constitutional grounds.
Brendan Tomas Boylan claimed his right to a timely trial was breached when it took 16 months longer than allowed by the Supreme Court of Canada.
BC Supreme Court Justice Simon Coval ruled that 26 1/2 months of delays were due to the defence and other circumstances he called unavoidable.
“This leaves 20 months from the indictment to completion of the trial, which is well under the 30-month Jordan ceiling, in which defence has not shown to be unreasonable,” Coval said in an oral ruling.
The charge against Boylan was sworn Nov. 19, 2020 and the trial ended Sept. 27, 2024. He was convicted last Nov. 20 when Coval ruled the Crown proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Boylan refused to stop having sex with the woman he lived with in 2018 after she told him to stop. Instead, he forcibly held her down on the bed, causing her injury.
Boylan denied the allegations, but Coval found his testimony “implausible, not credible and untruthful.”
.jpg)
Boylan argued that the time period from the charge to the end of his trial was 46 months and nine days, which exceeded the 30-month presumptive ceiling in BC Supreme Court, as set by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2016. That precedent-setting case is so named for Barrett Richard Jordan, a BC man accused of drug trafficking in 2008.
“Mr. Boylan submits that he and his counsel tried to expedite the trial process wherever possible, and that it was the Crown's lack of diligence which caused the case to markedly exceed the reasonable time requirements,” Coval said.
“The Crown submits that, at its core, this was a straightforward oath-versus-oath case between the complainant and accused, with a small amount of relevant evidence from some collateral witnesses. It says the vast majority of delay was caused by defence.”
Coval noted the first 4 ½ months of delays between Boylan’s first appearance in December 2020 and arraignment in May 2021 were due to repeated defence adjournments.
The Crown also accused the defence of remaining in Provincial Court for more than a year despite having no intention to run a trial in that court, delaying preparation of pretrial motions, being unavailable for hearings and withdrawing and revising applications.
“It further argues for two discrete events that caused unforeseeable and unavoidable delays,” Coval said.
The complainant was unavailable for the first four months of 2022 due to giving birth to a baby. There were repeated underestimations of court time, due to the additional issues and evidence raised by Boylan’s lawyer.
Boylan exercised his right to have the case against him heard in BC Supreme Court instead of keeping it in Provincial Court in April 2022.
The Crown had sought a trial date sometime in 2022, but an eight-day trial was scheduled for April 2023, which suited defence counsel availability.
The trial began, but was put on hold until the end of July 2023.
Defence conceded delay of 4 1/2 months to resubmit an application for information about the complainant’s sexual history after the initial one was insufficient.
The trial continued for five days in January 2024, but more time was needed. It resumed in April, but the defence made another application for information about the complainant’s sexual history.
Coval noted that the defence lawyers were unavailable for two months last summer.
The case finally closed in September.
A three-day sentencing hearing is scheduled to begin Sept. 8 in Prince George. Coval ordered a pre-sentencing report about Boylan be delivered by Aug. 25.
Lawyer Jon Duncan represented Boylan at trial, but Boylan represented himself in the constitutional challenge with assistance from Duncan associate Hazem Osso.
Boylan told Coval at the end of the June 3 hearing that he would be represented by Duncan’s firm at the sentencing hearing.
After the November conviction, Boylan was listed in the BC government online registry of teachers as having signed an undertaking not to practice “pending resolution of a matter before the commissioner or a hearing panel under Part 6 of the Teachers Act.”
