MONTREAL -- Sivaloganathan Thanabalasingham, the man who avoided trial for the murder of his wife because of the Jordan decision, will ultimately not be tried for his crime, according to a ruling from the Quebec Court of Appeal Tuesday.
Thanabalasingham was arrested in Aug. 2012 in Montreal and charged with the second-degree murder of his young wife Anuja Baskaran.
The stay was ordered in 2017 because nearly five years after his arrest, his trial had still not taken place. The lengthy delays violated his constitutional right to a trial within a reasonable time, Superior Court of Quebec Justice Alexandre Boucher ruled.
The Supreme Court of Canada's Jordan ruling sets maximum time limits for the conduct of proceedings, and the accused successfully invoked it.
But the Directeur des poursuites criminelles et pénales (DPCP) did not want the trial abandoned and insisted he be tried.
The DPCP challenged the stay of proceedings before the Court of Appeal. The court refused to make a decision, since the man had in the meantime been deported to his country of origin, Sri Lanka.
Since Thanabalasingham could not be brought to court to be tried - there is no extradition treaty between the two countries - the court did not see the point in rendering a decision. This appeal has become "moot and theoretical", the Court of Appeal wrote in November 2018.
The Supreme Court overturned this decision. Its chief justice, Richard Wagner, was of the opinion that 'this case is clearly not theoretical'.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 22, 2019.
