A man twice-convicted of sexual assault in a Brockville court has applied for a Jordan appeal, claiming he was denied the charter right to a speedy trial.
The Ministry of the Attorney General confirmed that 38-year-old Ryan Hartman applied for a stay in the court proceedings based off section 11 (b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Hartman was accused of sexually assaulting a-then-24-year-old woman while she was sleeping on an air mattress at an Oxford Mills, Ont., home in 2011.
In May 2012, he was convicted for sexual assault and sentenced to 14 months in jail.
He initially appealed the decision and lost in 2012.
He appealed again in 2015, but this time admitted he had sexually assaulted the victim, but claimed he was not criminally responsible because he suffered from sexsomnia, a mental condition that makes people engage in sexual acts while asleep.
On Nov. 19, 2018, a Brockville judge rejected that defence and ruled that Hartman was guilty of the sexual assault of a now 30-year-old Ottawa-area woman, who cannot be identified due to a court order.
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Hartman is set to be back in Brockville court on Thursday for sentencing, but with his Jordan appeal, it’s unclear whether sentencing will go ahead.
It’s also unclear whether his application for the appeal will stick. The speedy trial appeal, dubbed Jordan due to a 2016 Supreme Court ruling, places an 18-month presumptive ceiling for trials in provincial court, while for other cases, that ceiling rises to 30 months.
Hartman’s second trial began in April 10, 2017, and the judge’s ruling came down on Nov. 19, 2018, so his trial lasted just over two months past the 18-month ceiling.