Law360 Canada ( December 8, 2017, 2:13 PM EST) -- Appeal by Marakah from an Ontario Court of Appeal judgment affirming his convictions for firearms offences and upholding a pre-trial application ruling in the Crown’s favour. Marakah sent text messages regarding illegal transactions in firearms. The police obtained warrants to search his home and that of his accomplice, Winchester. They seized Marakah’s BlackBerry and Winchester’s iPhone, searched both devices, and found incriminating text messages. They charged Marakah and sought to use the text messages as evidence against him. At trial, Marakah argued that the messages should not be admitted against him because they were obtained in violation of his s. 8 Charter right against unreasonable search and seizure. The application judge held that the warrant for Marakah’s residence was invalid and that the text messages recovered from his BlackBerry could not be used against him, but that Marakah had no standing to argue that the text messages recovered from Winchester’s iPhone should not be admitted against him. He admitted the text messages and convicted Marakah of multiple firearms offences. The majority of the Ontario Court of Appeal agreed that Marakah could have no expectation of privacy in the text messages recovered from Winchester’s iPhone, and hence did not have standing to argue against their admissibility. The main question on appeal was whether Marakah could have had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the messages he sent to Winchester and whether he could claim s. 8 Charter protection for the text messages accessed through Winchester’s iPhone....