Ottawa Criminal Lawyer Appeals Daycare Sex Offense Case to Supreme Court

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In the past seven years, Ottawa daycare owner Jeffrey Wills has been convicted twice of sexually abusing two girls, ages 3 and 5.

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At the same time, Wills, 48, was ruled by an Ontario court of appeals that the judge at first instance had committed enough of a serious error to warrant annulment of his conviction and a new charge. It has since won two more lawsuits.

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But Ottawa’s Crown Attorney’s Office is looking to the country’s Supreme Court this time around, as a new trial from the Court of Appeals will suffice.

The Crown Attorney’s Office is seeking permission from the Supreme Court of Canada in hopes of overturning the Court of Appeals’ May ruling that granted Wills another retrial.

Canada’s Supreme Court has yet to decide whether they will hear the case.

At his first sentencing hearing for sexual interference, soliciting sexual contact, sexual exploitation, and sexually assaulting young girls, the parents said Wills’ misdeeds shattered their lives. Both families moved from the neighborhood.

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A father told the court that his daughter was afraid of men.

The mother of another victim also said at the time of the sentencing that her family’s world had changed and she felt dirty.

At the first trial in 2015, Wills pleaded not guilty, but the judge said the two girls’ evidence was “accurate, true and reliable.”

In December 2016, an appeals court ruled that the children’s silent statements should not be accepted as evidence in this case. (After assistant barrister Megan Cunningham submitted the girls’ out-of-court statements to their parents and petitioned police to admit them as evidence, the judge accepted the unsworn statements. Veteran Sex Crimes Prosecutor. Cunningham avoided further trauma to the girls by testifying in court.) The trial judge granted the application and used the girls’ out-of-court statements in his decision.

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Thus, the appeals court would grant Wills a new trial after a successful prosecutor’s application to spare the girls the trauma of testifying in court. She was convicted again in her second trial in 2018.

The disgraced nursery school owner won a new trial in May after an appeals court in Ontario overturned his latest child sex crime conviction, accusing a judge of erroneous work.

In the latest Court of Appeals ruling — a case in which the Crown Law Office of Ottawa is seeking leave to appeal to the Supreme Court — the judge erroneously ruled that they admitted his latest conviction. Discarded. Evidence of unreliable behavior that happened years after the daycare charges.

In May, an appeals court said the judge was erroneous in admitting evidence that Wills was masturbating in the living room with the window open until 3:00 p.m. in October 2016.

Two neighbors called police after taking pictures and videos of Wills masturbating naked. Wills was charged, tried, and convicted of public nudity and bail violations.