Yesterday, we took a close look in the civil docket at the Court’s record since 1991 with employment law cases. Today, we’re on the criminal side of the docket, taking a further look at the Court’s cases involving sexual offenses.

Over the entire twenty-seven year period, 52.38% of the Court’s criminal cases involving sexual offenses were won by the prosecution at the Court of Appeal. Of those prosecution wins, the Court reversed only 27.27%.

The Court affirmed one prosecution win in 1992, two in 1999, three in 2001, one in 2002, two in 2003 and 2004, one in 2011, three in 2012 and one in 2013.

The Court reversed one prosecution win in 1999, one in 2001, one in 2002, two in 2004 and one in 2010.

The Court’s overall reversal rate when reviewing cases won by the defendants at the Court of Appeal is 95%. Because of the rarity of affirmances, we present both results in Table 594 below. The Court reversed one defense win per year in 1992, 1994, 1995, 1997 and 2001. In 2002, the Court affirmed won, but reversed two. The Court then reversed two cases in 2005, one each year from 2010 to 2012, three in 2013, two in 2014 and one each in 2015 and 2017.

Overall, the Court has reversed 59.52% of criminal judgments involving sexual offenses (curiously, all but one of the reversals was complete as opposed to reversed-in-part). From 1991 to 1995, the Court reversed 75% of the time. From 1996 to 2000, the Court reversed in two of four cases. From 2001 to 2005, the reversal was once again 50% – nine of eighteen cases. From 2006 to 2010, the Court decided only two such cases, reversing in both. Since 2011, the Court has reversed in 64.29% of its cases.

Join us back here next Thursday as we turn our attention to two new areas of law.

Image courtesy of Flickr by DocentJoyce (no changes).