By Canadian Press

Trial time limits from Jordan ruling don’t apply to deliberation: Supreme Court

Mar 20, 2020 | 9:02 AM

OTTAWA — The Supreme Court of Canada says the length of time a judge takes to deliberate and issue a verdict in a criminal trial is not included in the time limits the high court set to protect an accused from unreasonable delays in having a case heard.

The judges are unanimous in their finding that the right to be tried in a reasonable time includes a judge’s deliberation period.

However they also all agree that the judge’s time wrestling with a decision is not part of the time periods set for trials to be heard in a landmark 2016 ruling known as the Jordan decision.

The Jordan decision says the time from charges being laid until the end of a trial should rarely be more than 18 months for cases heard in provincial courts and 30 months for cases heard in superior courts.

Today’s decision dismisses an appeal from a Manitoba man convicted in 2016 of sexual assault and interference with his young stepdaughter.

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The man, known only as K.G.K. to protect the identity of the victim, argued the nine months it took a trial judge to deliberate before convicting K.G.K. in October 2016 was unreasonable.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 20, 2020.

The Canadian Press

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version had a headline that said the Supreme Court ruled Jordan limits apply to deliberation by judges.