‘Magic wand’ fails to save cocaine case against Mississauga man

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A judge has issued a stay in the case of a Mississauga, Ont., man police allegedly caught with more than $70,000 in cash, 400 oxycodone pills, digital scales and other drug paraphernalia in his apartment, because completing his trial would have taken more than 29 months.

The man was also allegedly holding keys to a storage locker in the same building that contained over eight kilos of cocaine and another $14,000 in cash.

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Christopher Vaughan, who was facing charges of possession of narcotics for the purpose of trafficking, applied for the stay in Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice, arguing successfully that his right to a trial without unreasonable delay had been violated. In a precedent known as the Jordan rule, the Supreme Court of Canada set a presumptive ceiling of 18 months for provincial court trials and 30 months for superior court trials, after which delay is considered unreasonable unless exceptional circumstances are proven.

“This case is another example of how a major disclosure failure by the Crown, in a region beset with chronic institutional delay, must be immediately redressed or face the consequences,” Justice Deena F. Baltman wrote in a recent decision.

According to numbers obtained by The Canadian Press late last year, more than 400 Jordan challenges ended cases across Canada between January 2023 and November 2024.

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Police arrested Vaughan on March 2, 2023. His spouse, Maria Lopez, was also charged with possession for the purpose of trafficking.

“His trial before a jury is scheduled for 7-10 days commencing on July 28, 2025. The trial is anticipated to be completed 29 months and 8 days after the swearing of the information,” Baltman said in her decision dated March 26.

Even though Vaughan’s “trial will be completed 25 days under the 30-month ceiling for Superior Court matters,” he argued successfully the delay was unreasonable.

Much of the dispute focuses on delayed Crown disclosure of four documents the RCMP used to convince a judge to issue search warrants in the case.

Six months after police charged Vaughan, his lawyer was still waiting for the Crown to hand over “several” of those documents, known as informations to obtain, or ITOs.

“This is a search and seizure case and without these ITOs, in particular the first ITO that remains outstanding, counsel can’t proceed to advise Mr. Vaughan on election or any potential plea,” Vaughan’s lawyer said at the time. “And counsel feels he can’t proceed without those to a judicial pre-trial at this time.”

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It was over seven months after the charges were laid that the Crown finally handed over the documents.

Vaughan opted on Nov. 15, 2023, to be tried in the Ontario Court of Justice.

But his trial was scheduled for this past February, which would have put it five months over the Jordan ceiling, Baltman said.

The Crown tried getting earlier trial dates in what’s known as the “Jordan compliance court,” but that didn’t work out.

So instead, on March 11, 2024, the Crown filed a direct indictment against Vaughan, sending his case to the Superior Court of Justice. Moving “the matter ‘upstairs’ was done against” Vaughan’s wishes, the court heard.

But even in the higher court, Vaughan’s trial was scheduled to end this coming August, 29 months and 8 days after he was formally charged.

Vaughan wasn’t responsible for any of the delays, said the decision.

It notes the Crown’s choice to prefer the indictment, bypassing the preliminary inquiry stage and proceeding directly to trial, “actually led to an additional six months of delay.”

The delay in Vaughan’s case “is extremely close to the (30-month) Jordan ceiling,” Baltman said.

Allowing Crowns to take a case directly to trial to “transform an already unreasonable delay into a reasonable one would turn the Superior Court into a ‘dumping ground’ for cases that should have resolved within 18 months” in Ontario’s provincial courts, she said.

Such a move “cannot become a magic wand by which an unreasonable delay is transformed into a reasonable one,” said the judge.

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