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But he will now have no record of those crimes. The judge has just stayed the charges against him.

Because Charley had still not been sentenced as of last month, Morgan cited the Supreme Court’s landmark 2016 Jordan decision on the need for timely trials and stayed the charges, ruling that too much time had elapsed since his conviction and the criminal’s constitutional rights have been breached by this unreasonable delay.

“It was the post-judgment delay in sentencing which should have been done more quickly and which pushed this case over the limit,” the judge said.

“That phase of the case began in January 2017, fully 6 months after the Supreme Court’s judgment in Jordan and, therefore, when no one can claim reliance on the pre-existing state of the law. Mr. Charley cannot be made to shoulder the failure to expedite the case once all parties were aware of the new … parameters.”

It’s certainly been a long road for this case – and granted, not an easy one for Charley.

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He’d been held in custody at the Toronto South Detention Centre since his arrest three and a half years ago. “He spent almost 500 days in lockdown during his incarceration without being allowed to leave his cell,” said his lawyer David Midanik. “He was treated much worse than had he been sentenced to a maximum security penitentiary.”

Meanwhile, the judicial process sputtered away. According to the new Jordan deadlines, cases in Superior Court must be concluded within 30 months. Charley’s conviction came at the 24-month mark.