Mike on Crime

By Mike McIntyre
Winnipeg Free Press

A man walks up to a sex-trade worker, offers to pay for her services and then is busted on the spot by Winnipeg police officers.

Sounds like an open and shut case, right?

Wrong.

Police charged the man with “communicating with another person for the purposes of engaging in prostitution.”

His defence lawyer, Dan Manning, immediately spotted a unique defence for his client based on an ultra-thin technicality.

Sure, the man was a john. But the charge implied he was something else — namely the one providing the services, not buying them.

The Crown, realizing its mistake, tried to amend the charge in court to read “communicating for the purpose of obtaining the sexual services of a prostitute.”

But the judge would have nothing of it, ruling the original charge would stand. And with no evidence to support it, the man was acquitted.

“When the Crown decided to word the charge against the accused as engaging in prostitution and not to include the wording obtaining the sexual services of a prostitute, the evidence against the accused has to support a conclusion that he was a prostitute rather than a customer,” the trial judge ruled.

The case then landed in the lap of the Manitoba Court of Appeal, who ruled Wednesday the Crown does have sufficient grounds to fight the ruling.

The Crown’s theory is that regardless of how the charge read, the man still should have been convicted because there was no mystery as to what he was accused of doing.

They said the original wording of the charge was “wide enough” to include a customer of a prostitute. And they claim that allowing the acquittal to stand could have far-reaching implications on other cases in Manitoba and Canada.

There’s a final twist to the strange case.

Despite its appeal, the Crown is not seeking to have the man at the centre of the case retried. The Crown concedes his acquittal can stand, but wants a legal “clarification to avoid setting a precedence for future cases.”

Manning has been appointed by the appeal court to argue the defence side of the issue, even though his client doesn’t face any future ramifications. His legal fees are to be paid by the provincial government.

No date has been set for the hearing.