Brock Martland, KC and Cait Fleck obtained a not-guilty verdict at Vancouver Provincial Court on July 7, 2026, for their client, Dustin Kinamore. Mr. Kinamore had previously been convicted and unsuccessfully appealed to the British Columbia Court of Appeal, before succeeding unanimously at the Supreme Court of Canada in 2025.
His SCC counsel, Matthew Nathanson, argued that inadmissible evidence had been introduced by the Crown, “weaponized by the Crown in cross-examination,” and relied upon to disbelieve and convict him, without the required evidentiary safeguards being followed. The SCC quashed the conviction, ordered a new trial, and the resulting procedure for Crown-led sexual-history evidence is now referred to as a “Kinamore application.”
At the re-trial, the Crown called four witnesses and Mr. Kinamore testified. He was acquitted. The result was not simply an inability to determine which account to believe: the trial judge noted inconsistencies and credibility issues with portions of the complainant’s evidence, and accepted Mr. Kinamore’s account of the material events. The result concluded a six-year proceeding with an acquittal following the re-trial ordered by Canada’s highest court.
