"McNEIL" DISCLOSURE - ABILITY TO USE IN CROSS-EXAMINATION ANALYZED
Saturday, January 12, 2013 at 9:26PM The 2009 Supreme Court of Canada case of R. v. McNeil imposed a duty on the police to treat certain kinds of [disciplinary] records as first party disclosure which they must provide to the Crown as part of the fruits of their investigation. The net effect of this is that where the record reflects “serious misconduct” either related to the investigation or where it could reasonably have an impact on the case against the accused, it must be disclosed to the Crown by the police as first party disclosure. In the circumstances of this [exceed .08] case, given the focused issue which the defence specifically sought to address by further disclosure, . . . [t]here was no reasonable possibility that the undisclosed information could have been used in meeting the case for the Crown or advancing a defence respecting the issue in play at that stage of the proceedings in the context of the evidence. R. v. Boyne, 2012 SKCA 124