Yukon appeal court orders new sexual\u2011assault trial for Dawson man<\/p>\n
Published 2:30 pm Friday, March 27, 2026<\/p>\n
The Yukon Court of Appeal has overturned the sexual\u2011assault conviction of Dawson City resident Leslie Iain Weatherston, ruling that errors at his 2024 jury trial rendered the proceedings unfair.<\/p>\n
In a decision released March 20, the three\u2011judge panel quashed the conviction and ordered a new trial after finding Weatherston was denied a fair opportunity to defend himself after the Crown breached a pre\u2011trial ruling during his cross\u2011examination.<\/p>\n
Justice Patrice Abrioux wrote that the Crown \u201ceffectively cornered\u201d Weatherston during cross\u2011examination by asking about monogamy despite an earlier ruling barring such evidence, leaving him unable to explain his reaction to the complainant\u2019s disclosure that she had been with another man.<\/p>\n
The complainant had testified at trial that Weatherston became angry when she told him of the encounter, and that his reaction contributed to her fear on the night of the alleged assault. Weatherston denied being angry, saying he felt sad instead.<\/p>\n
Abrioux found that once the Crown breached the order, the trial judge should have revisited the admissibility of evidence about the couple\u2019s relationship or declared a mistrial. Instead, the jury was instructed to ignore the exchange, a remedy the Court of Appeal deemed inadequate.<\/p>\n
The court held that the mid\u2011trial instruction \u201cfell short\u201d of restoring fairness, noting the jury was left without the context needed to assess Weatherston\u2019s credibility on a \u201ccentral\u201d issue in the Crown\u2019s case.<\/p>\n
Weatherston was convicted in September 2024 and later sentenced to 18 months in custody.<\/p>\n
The appeal court did not address the merits of the evidence or the remaining grounds of appeal, finding the trial\u2011management errors alone required a new trial. A date for that retrial has not yet been set.<\/p>\n
A publication ban had previously been placed on the proceedings, however, on Jan. 15, 2025, the trial judge granted a consent application to rescind the publication ban.<\/p>\n
Contact Jake Howarth at jake.howarth@yukon-news.com <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yukon appeal court orders new sexual\u2011assault trial for Dawson man Published 2:30 pm Friday, March 27, 2026 The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566435,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[49,48,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-566434","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}