Law360 Canada ( September 11, 2026, 11:27 AM EDT) -- Appeal by appellant from a judgment of the Ontario Court of Appeal which reduced his 24-month conditional sentence to 20 months. The appellant was convicted of sexual assault in October 2021. In October 2022, the appellant filed and served an application for a stay of proceedings on the basis that the post-verdict sentencing delay violated his right to be tried within a reasonable time under s. 11(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Charter). More than 14 months after the finding of guilt was entered, the parties attended before the trial judge and made submissions on the s. 11(b) application. The trial judge dismissed the application and sentenced the appellant to a conditional sentence of two years less a day, followed by one year of probation. In her reasons for decision on the Charter application, the trial judge concluded that post-verdict sentencing delay was subject to a five-month ceiling, after which it was presumptively unreasonable under s. 11(b) of the Charter. She found that the net post‑verdict sentencing delay in the case was just under four months. The appellant appealed. The Court of Appeal upheld his conviction but concluded that the trial judge erred in her s. 11(b) breach analysis. It found that there had been a breach of s. 11(b) and held that the appropriate remedy was a reduction of the appellant’s conditional sentence. The appellant submitted that the Court should adopt the approach in R. v. Charley (Charley) and impose a five-month presumptive ceiling for post-verdict sentencing delay. The Crown submitted that the better approach was to ask whether the time taken to impose the sentence was markedly longer than it reasonably should have been in all the circumstances....