Trial time limits from Jordan ruling don’t apply to deliberation: Supreme Court

OTTAWA — The Supreme Court of Canada says the length of time a judge takes to deliberate and issue a verdict in a criminal trial is not included in the time limits the high court set to protect an accused from unreasonable delays in having a case heard.

The judges are unanimous in their finding that the right to be tried in a reasonable time includes a judge’s deliberation period.

However they also all agree that the judge’s time wrestling with a decision is not part of the time periods set for trials to be heard in a landmark 2016 ruling known as the Jordan decision.

The Jordan decision says the time from charges being laid until the end of a trial should rarely be more than 18 months for cases heard in provincial courts and 30 months for cases heard in superior courts.