Nunavut judge made 'no error of law' in murder acquittal, Supreme Court of Canada says

The Supreme Court of Canada says a Nunavut judge "made no error of law" when she acquitted a man on trial for murder in Iqaluit in 2021. 

Daniel Hodgson was charged in connection with the death of Bradley Winsor at a house party in Apex, near Iqaluit, in 2017. 

At trial, Hodgson said he acted in self-defence when he choked Winsor, and only meant to restrain him, not kill him.

In May 2021, Nunavut Justice Susan Charlesworth ruled there was not enough proof to say he intended to kill Winsor.

The Crown then appealed the acquittal, arguing Charlesworth erred by not treating the choke hold seriously enough. 

Nunavut's Court of Appeal then ordered Hodgson to stand trial again. But the retrial didn't happen because Hodgson's lawyer appealed the retrial order to the highest court, and in February, the Supreme Court restored his acquittal.

The Supreme Court released reasons for its unanimous decision Friday morning. 

Question of chokehold danger 

In its decision ordering a retrial, the Nunavut Court of Appeal wrote that blocking someone's airway is "always an act which is more than merely transient or stifling in nature."

It also said Charlesworth - the trial judge who acquitted Hodgson - did not address that inherent danger in her reasons for acquittal but rather "appeared to accept that a chokehold was a 'regular calm down method' or a 'known calm down move.'"

The Supreme Court of Canada rejected the Nunavut Court of Appeal's decision, saying the proposition that a chokehold is "always an inherently dangerous act" risks "inappropriately injecting an objective element" into the analysis of someone's mental state when committing a crime. 

"The analysis cannot consider what the accused ought to have known about the inherent dangerousness of a chokehold," the Supreme Court wrote. 

"Any slippage from the high bar of subjective intent required for murder must be avoided."

The Supreme Court said it was up to the trial judge to make a factual finding on Hodgson's intent, and there was no clear error of law. 

"The absence of a clearly articulated error of law makes it difficult to conduct effective appellate review and makes it unclear as to whether the alleged error is one of law. In this case, there is no error of law."

The Supreme Court also said the appeal court did not explain why the error it claimed to have identified was a legal one.

"In some respects, it is difficult to understand what precise legal error motivated the [Nunavut] Court of Appeal to order a new trial on this ground," the court wrote.