In R. v. Scordino (Ont CA, 2025) the Ontario Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal from a murder conviction.
The court considered issues of post-offence conduct (here called 'after-the-fact conduct'), in the context of a jury charge:
[59] After-the-fact conduct evidence is a type of circumstantial evidence that can pose unique reasoning risks. As the Supreme Court has recognized, jurors may be tempted to “jump too quickly from evidence of [after-the-fact] conduct to an inference of guilt” without properly considering alternative explanations for the conduct in question: R. v. White, 1998 CanLII 789 (SCC), [1998] 2 S.C.R. 72, at para. 57 (“White (1998)”). In many circumstances, trial judges can address this risk by providing a general cautionary instruction and informing the jury that they must consider other explanations for the accused’s actions: White (1998), at para. 57; R. v. White, 2011 SCC 13, [2011] 1 S.C.R. 433, at para. 24 (“White (2011)”); Calnen, at para. 117.
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