Background
Matthew Berg was charged with sexual assault following a sexual encounter in which consent was the central factual dispute. Both Berg and the complainant testified at trial. The complainant stated she did not consent and that Berg forced himself on her; Berg maintained the encounter was entirely consensual. The trial judge rejected Berg’s account, stating: “I reject Mr. Berg’s account because I accept [the complainant’s] testimony.” Read functionally, however, the trial judge’s reasons showed he had assessed Berg’s account against the totality of the evidence — including the complainant’s credible testimony and corroborating circumstantial evidence — before finding guilt proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Berg was convicted of sexual assault.
Berg appealed to the Court of Appeal for Saskatchewan, arguing that the trial judge had failed to resolve material inconsistencies in the complainant’s testimony and had wrongly used her testimony alone to dismiss his account. A majority of the Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding that the trial judge had correctly applied the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard. A dissenting justice would have allowed the appeal on the ground that the trial judge had not conducted the “considered and reasoned acceptance” analysis required by the Ontario Court of Appeal’s decision in R. v. J.J.R.D. (2006), 218 O.A.C. 37. Berg then appealed as of right to the Supreme Court of Canada.
The Supreme Court heard and dismissed the appeal from the bench on April 14, 2026, ordering Berg to surrender into custody, with written reasons to follow. Those reasons were released on June 5, 2026.
The Court’s Holding
The Supreme Court unanimously dismissed the appeal. On the two grounds Berg raised — failure to resolve inconsistencies in the complainant’s evidence and impermissible use of her testimony to reject his account — the Court substantially agreed with the majority of the Court of Appeal and declined to add further analysis. The trial judge had convicted Berg based on proof beyond a reasonable doubt, not merely on a preference for the complainant’s evidence.
The Court wrote separately to correct a growing misapplication of R. v. J.J.R.D. Trial judges have been invoking that decision when structuring their W. (D.) analyses in cases where two conflicting accounts each appear credible in isolation. The Court held that this practice is an error: J.J.R.D. is a sufficiency-of-reasons case intended to guide appellate review, not a formula that trial judges may use to enter convictions. Doherty J.A.’s oft-cited passage — that rejection of an accused’s evidence may rest on “a considered and reasoned acceptance beyond a reasonable doubt of the truth of conflicting credible evidence” — was directed at appellate courts assessing whether a trial judge adequately explained a conviction, not at authorizing trial judges to convict on the strength of a complainant’s testimony alone.
The Court cautioned that invoking J.J.R.D. in a trial setting risks reducing the proceeding to a credibility contest, the very error the W. (D.) framework was designed to prevent. A guilty verdict must always rest on proof beyond a reasonable doubt — something that exceeds a “considered and reasoned acceptance” of the Crown’s evidence. Because the trial judge in this case did not in fact use J.J.R.D. to short-circuit the W. (D.) analysis, no legal error occurred and the appeal was dismissed.
Key Takeaways
- R. v. J.J.R.D. is an appellate sufficiency-of-reasons standard, not a trial-level credibility formula; trial judges should not rely on it when structuring W. (D.) analyses or jury directions.
- A conviction for sexual assault — or any offence — cannot rest solely on a “considered and reasoned acceptance” of the complainant’s testimony; the standard remains proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
- The W. (D.) framework exists to prevent trials from becoming mere credibility contests; applying J.J.R.D. at the trial level risks undermining the presumption of innocence.
- Courts of appeal should continue to scrutinize whether trial judges have assessed conflicting evidence — including both testimonial and circumstantial evidence — against the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard, which is what J.J.R.D. was originally designed to ensure.
Why It Matters
This decision resolves a recurring source of confusion in Canadian criminal courts. J.J.R.D. had been widely cited by trial judges — particularly in sexual assault cases where two credible accounts conflict — as a basis for convicting on the strength of a complainant’s testimony without separately identifying why the accused’s account was disbelieved on its own terms. The Supreme Court’s guidance puts a clear stop to that practice and reaffirms that the W. (D.) framework, not J.J.R.D., governs how triers of fact must reason through conflicting evidence.
For defence counsel, Crown prosecutors, and trial judges across Canada, the ruling clarifies that J.J.R.D. language has no place in jury charges or trial-level credibility analyses. Appeals built around alleged misapplication of J.J.R.D. at the trial level now have a clearer standard against which to be measured, and trial judges are on notice to scrutinize their own reasons to ensure a conviction is grounded in the full beyond-a-reasonable-doubt analysis that W. (D.) demands.