A convicted drug dealer will go back behind bars after an unsuccessful appeal of his 2021 conviction. Seamus Fyfe’s defence argued his arrest and search in 2018 by Sault Police violated his Charter rights because it was done without a warrant.
Fyfe was arrested on Oct. 16, 2018 when Sault Ste. Marie Police officers on surveillance observed him leaving his Terrance Avenue apartment with a black duffel bag, which he placed in the trunk of his vehicle. At the time, the police were waiting for a search warrant for the accused’s address.
A search of that bag in the trunk revealed 80 grams of cocaine, 60 grams of crystal methamphetamine, 12 grams of fentanyl and 16 grams of oxycodone, along with more than $3,000 in cash, plastic baggies, scales, a calculator and what appeared to be a debt list.
The Sault Police were watching Fyfe based, in part, on information provided to officers by seven confidential informants (CIs) who they say were involved in the city’s drug subculture. Those CIs noted that Fyfe kept drugs in a bag when dealing either from his apartment or on the streets.
When the case went to court, defence attempted to argue in a pre-trial motion that the accused’s Charter rights were violated because there was no warrant for the arrest and search of his vehicle and person and that he was arrested without reasonable and probable grounds.
Trial judge Justice Ronald A. Minard of the Ontario Court of Justice dismissed the application and Fyfe was convicted and sentenced to 49 months in prison, less pre-sentence credit of 20 months.
In the original bail review for this case, Fyfe presented an affidavit to the court stating he has two undergraduate degrees, is a medical school graduate and had hopes of becoming a doctor in the United States. In the past 10 years, however, Fyfe had attended residential treatment programs for substance abuse on at least three separate occasions before being arrested on the trafficking charge.
Fyfe pleaded guilty to some of the charges against him at trial, but was found guilty on count 12 (possession of 11.68 grams of fentanyl for the purpose of trafficking) and count 14 (possession of 0.6 grams of a cocaine/fentanyl mixture for the purpose of trafficking). Defence had argued those two substances were intended for personal use by the accused and were not for trafficking.
He spent significant time on bail waiting for his original trial, which ended in August of 2021, and was on bail pending appeal until the Oct. 27, 2023 decision.
In the appeal of the sentence on counts 12 and 14, defence lawyer Michael Lacy argued that Fyfe’s Charter rights were violated on three grounds:
1. Did the trial judge err in relying on the October 15 surveillance as supporting the objective reasonableness of the appellant’s arrest?
2. The evidence and the trial judge’s findings do not support the appellant’s argument about the grounds relied on by the arresting officers.
3. The appellant’s proposed restriction of the assessment of the objective reasonableness of the grounds for arrest is inconsistent with prevailing law.
It was argued the police surveillance of Fyfe on the day of and the day before his arrest did not confirm the information that was given to police by the CIs.
“The issue was whether there were reasonable and probable grounds for the officers to believe that the appellant possessed illegal drugs for the purpose of trafficking, not, as the appellant’s counsel asserted in the Charter application, whether he was observed actively trafficking or for that matter whether he was trafficking from his apartment at 11 Terrance,” wrote the Court of Appeal for Ontario. “The fact that the officers did not observe evidence of trafficking did not mean that the surveillance had no confirmatory value.”
Writing for the three-judge panel, Madam Justice Katherine Van Rensburg said there was no justification for a reduction of Fyfe's sentence, noting the trial judge took into account his rehabilitative efforts.
“Although the appellant’s trafficking in one sense supported his addiction, he operated a criminal enterprise of some complexity, with people working for him, and that was engaged in largely for profit. This was an aggravating factor,” she said in her decision.