SUSPECTED DRUG DEALERS FACE ANOTHER TRIAL AS COURT SETS NEW WIRETAP RULES

OTTAWA (CP) - Neil Grandmaison and eight other defendants acquitted of
running a drug ring in Victoria are headed back to trial after
Canada's highest court ruled wiretap evidence can be used against them.

In a 9-0 judgment Thursday, the Supreme Court of Canada clarified the
test judges must use in approving such investigative techniques.
Under the Criminal Code, wiretapping is loosely defined as justifiable
where "other investigative procedures are unlikely to succeed."
Writing for the unanimous court, Judge Louis LeBel offered more guidance.

"Wiretapping is highly intrusive and a judge should protect citizens
against unwanted fishing expeditions by the state," he said.

Police applying for such authority must show in documents they submit
to the authorizing judge that "there is no other reasonable
alternative method of investigation, in the circumstances of the
particular criminal inquiry.

"The objective of a police investigation - to bring the higher-ups in
a drug ring to justice - rightly informs the investigative necessity
analysis. The police had more need for wiretapping given that they
were trying to move up the chain and catch the higher-ups in the operation."

Thursday's ruling upholds an appeal court judgment ordering a new
trial, but doesn't support that court's assertion that wiretaps should
be authorized based on efficiency. That would give law enforcers too
much power, LeBel suggests.

"Using the efficiency standard," he wrote, "wiretapping would always
be available to the police and would replace a standard of necessity
with one of opportunity at the discretion of (police)."

The accused were cleared after a trial judge threw out extensive
wiretap evidence, ruling the police officer who applied for authority
to make the recordings wasn't credible.

Police began investigating the suspects in January 1995. They
executed search warrants at several homes and arrested the defendants
the following October.

At trial, the wiretapping evidence was challenged on the basis that
the police officer, in a 130-page document used to get a judge's
authority for the wiretaps, made mistakes in how he described certain
sources.

The officer testified that he discovered the error before the trial
but didn't tell anyone, and that he meant to correct it but forgot.

A provincial court judge accepted that it was an inadvertent mistake
but found the officer's explanation tainted his credibility. The
judge extended this doubt to the entire document seeking wiretap
approval and ruled the authorization should not have happened.

The B.C. Court of Appeal threw out that result in June 1998.