Case information

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Criminal law - Trial - Break and entry - Corroboration - Whether the trial judge’s reasons did not exhibit an error in understanding with respect to the law of corroboration such as to merit a setting aside of an acquittal as determined by the majority in the Court of Appeal.

Mr. Dowe’s father, John Gibson Dowe, was a caretaker responsible for the collection of coins from laundromat machines at the apartment building located at 21 Dickey Street in Amherst. As was his usual practice, he placed the coins he had collected up to about noon April 17, 2006 in a cardboard box in the desk in a locked basement office at that address. “After lunch” he saw his son and William Lank standing around the front part of the building, talking. Shortly thereafter he went to check on the locked basement office and found the door had been “pried open with a crowbar or something” and the cardboard box and money in the desk had been stolen. Neither Mr. Lank nor Michael Gordon Dowe lived at that address.

Mr. Lank was arrested a day or two after the robbery, providing a videotaped confession and statement. He initially plead not guilty but eventually entered a guilty plea to the offence. At the time of Mr. Dowe’s trial, Mr. Lank was awaiting sentencing. At trial Mr. Lank testified that he and Mr. Dowe had broken into the office and taken the money. It was Mr. Dowe who told him where the money could be found. They used a pry-bar to open the locked basement office door. He had a backpack with him that day but carried the money away in the cardboard box. After trial in the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, Michael Gordon Dowe was acquitted on a charge of break and entry.

On appeal, the majority of the Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, set the acquittal aside and ordered a new trial. Cromwell J.A. dissenting would have dismissed the appeal. He could not by implication read into the judge’s reasons any finding by him that corroboration in law had to implicate the accused let alone that he could in law only convict if there was independent evidence implicating the accused in the commission of the offence. He was of the view that the judge found, as he was entitled to find and as he stated expressly, that the charge had not been proved.