Can anyone define the "Rule In Wray" as it applies to circumstantial evidence in the Canadian Legal System?

Answer 1

You asked a technical question, so here's a technical answer.

We should start with the Ontario Court of Appeal decision in R. v. Wray, [1970] 3 C.C.C. 122, [1970] 2 O.R. 3, 12 C.L.Q. 103. The Court of Appeal stated the applicable principle at p. 123:

In our view, a trial Judge has a discretion to reject evidence, even of substantial weight, if he considers that its admission would be unjust or unfair to the accused, or calculated to bring the administration of justice into disrepute. The exercise of such discretion, of course, depends upon the particular facts before him.

He continued:

Cases where to admit certain evidence would be calculated to bring the administration of justice into disrepute will be rare, but we think the discretion of a trial Judge extends to such cases.

There are two branches of the Ontario Court of Appeal's exclusionary rule. The first relates to the injustice to the accused. The second relates to the public interest in the administration of justice, generally. In the Supreme Court of Canada, the appeal was allowed, the SCC saying there was a rule that when the admission of evidence was unfair there was a discretion in the trial judge to exclude the evidence; but that the rule did not apply where the admission of the evidence was merely unfortunate for the accused and not unfair. Mr. Justice Martland said that unfairness would only result where the evidence was gravely prejudicial to the accused and its probative force was trifling. Mr. Justice Martland said also that there was no rule that permitted a trial judge to exclude evidence on the ground that its admission would bring the administration of justice into disrepute.

The result was that the Supreme Court of Canada confirmed that there was a rule, of limited scope, which permitted a trial judge to refuse to admit evidence on the ground that it was unjust
or unfair to the accused to admit the evidence, but that the rule had no second branch that would permit the exclusion of evidence where it admission would be contrary to the public interest in the administration of justice.

It was against the background of the law as expressed in R. v. Wray that the Charter was framed and adopted.

Here is what the Supreme Court of Canada said in R. v. S. (R.J.) [1995] 1 S.C.R.. I think this link should take you to the reasons: http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/1995/1995rcs1-451/1995rcs1-451.html


3. The Rule on Admission of Illegally Obtained Evidence

The most obvious limitation at common law to the principle against self-incrimination was the rule that all relevant evidence, even if obtained illegally, is generally admissible at the trial of an accused. The admission of such evidence appeared to flow from the principle that the criminal law trial is a truth-seeking process and from an emphasis on the reliability of the evidence over all other considerations, including fairness to the accused. This reliability rationale, itself, no doubt partly hinged on an underlying desire for fairness in the criminal process: R. v. Whittle, [1994] 2 S.C.R. 914 (per Sopinka J.). This Court's decision in R. v. Wray, [1971] S.C.R. 272, permitted a narrow exception to the admission of illegally obtained evidence where admission of the evidence might operate unfairly procedurally, although subsequent decisions were reluctant to adopt unquestioningly this highly limited discretion. The narrow common law rule in Wray has now been overruled and the approach is one of weighing probative value against prejudicial effect, with no inquiry into how far probative value exceeds prejudicial effect: R. v. Potvin, [1989] 1 S.C.R. 525, at pp. 531-32

From this, you should take the rule as being dead.