Canada’s justice system apparently failed Anuja Baskaran a second time as the Montreal man charged with her murder saw his case placed under a stay of proceedings on Thursday after a Superior Court judge ruled it took too long for the Crown to prosecute him.
Baskaran, 21, was killed, on Aug. 11, 2012, after her throat was slit. Her estranged husband, Sivaloganathan Thanabalasingham, had been released from custody two months earlier despite heaving pleaded guilty in three cases involving conjugal violence.
Thanabalasingham was charged with second-degree murder in the case. But on Thursday, Superior Court Justice Alexandre Boucher ruled, at the Montreal courthouse, that it had taken the Crown too long to prosecute the case.
It is the first time in Quebec that a murder case has been placed under a stay of proceedings following the Jordan decision delivered by the Supreme Court of Canada last summer. The decision set limits on how long a person accused of a crime should expect to wait for a trial. In Superior Court cases the limit was set at 30 months. Boucher’s decision was made orally and a written version is expected to be made public at a later date.
Thanabalasingham was returned to the Montreal Detention Centre Thursday afternoon to collect his personal belongings but he should be released soon, said his defence lawyer Joseph La Leggia.
“Each case is based on its own merits. Each case lives and dies on its own facts,” La Leggia said when asked if the decision might send a message to prosecutors who also have murder cases that have been pending for years
Crown prosecutor Catherine Perreault said she was unable to comment on the decision and referred interview requests to the provincial prosecutor’s bureau. A spokesperson for the bureau said they will consider filing an appeal.
According to a story published by La Presse in December 2012, Thanabalasingham was awaiting his sentence in three conjugal violence cases involving Baskaran when he was charged with her murder. Following one of the incidents, Anuja, who was from Sri Lanka, told police she wasn’t even sure why she was married to Thanabalasingham. She described their union as an arranged marriage based on how her family owed money to his. The couple were married a year before Baskaran was killed. According to the article, Baskaran first reported that she had been assaulted by Thanabalasignham in December 2011 and told police he had struck her on the head about 10 times.
The first court in Canada to place a stay of proceedings on a murder case, following the Jordan decision, was last year in Ontario.
La Leggia explained that the judge reached the decision made on Thursday because the Crown failed to convince the Court that delays in the case were justified.
The Supreme Court of Canada decision made last summer anticipated such scenarios would arrive and established guidelines for judges to follow.
“(T)he delay may exceed the ceiling because the case is of moderate complexity in a jurisdiction with significant institutional delay problems,” the Supreme Court wrote in its decision. Quebec’s Superior Court system has been plagued by delays for years because of a lack of judges and available courtrooms.
“On the other hand, the rights of all accused persons cannot be held in abeyance while the system works to respond to this new framework. Breaches will still be found and stays of proceedings will still be entered for cases currently in the system. For example, if the delay in a simple case vastly exceeds the ceiling because of repeated mistakes or missteps by the Crown, the delay might be unreasonable even though the parties were operating under the previous framework.”
La Leggia said one thing he argued after having filed his motion was that the Crown caused an unnecessary delay when it used court time in an effort to have the second-degree murder charge changed to first-degree murder.
