2023 June 29

R.v Dent, 2023 ONCA 460

The Ontario Court of Appeal unanimously dismissed an appeal from conviction for defamatory libel pursuant to s. 300 of the Criminal Code, RSC c. C-46 and allowed the Crown’s appeal to impose a sentence of two years less a day incarceration (instead of an 18 month conditional sentence prescribed by the trial judge).  The charges concerned a campaign of defamation which the Court of Appeal held “was clearly designed to destroy [the victim’s] reputation, employment, career and personal relationships, as well as the victim’s ability to travel to the United States where his new family lived.  The trial judge had correctly described his role in determining whether the Crown had proved the accused was guilty of disseminating the libels, beyond a reasonable doubt. The Court of Appeal stated the “trial judge began his sentencing decision noting that the primary sentencing objectives for this offence are denunciation and general deterrence, and by recognizing that although [the accused] is a first offender, this was a worst-case example of criminal defamation, ‘a campaign of epic proportions exceeding anything any of us have been able to read about in all of the cases cited for my consideration, in this instance’” and that the trial judge called it “one of the most egregious [offences] she could have committed in the context of s. 300 of the Criminal Code.”