In ordering Const. Laurence Mooney to face another traffic court hearing on a charge of careless driving, a three-member Alberta Court of Appeal panel said a lower court judge erred in acquitting him.Sign up to receive daily headline news from the Calgary Herald, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.By clicking on the sign up button you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.
Davis had convicted Mooney of a Traffic Safety Act charge of careless driving after he twice ran over pedestrian Evangelos Lagoudis, who jaywalked behind Mooney’s unmarked police truck on Dec. 4, 2018.With Lagoudis behind his truck, Mooney backed up to a parking spot on 2nd Street S.W., knocking the victim down and running over him. Thinking he had struck a snowbank, Mooney pulled the truck forward, running over Lagoudis a second time.Davis ordered Mooney to pay a $750 fine.
In their decision, the appeal judges said Davidson erred in finding “conduct that was a breach of duty to the public deserving of punishment was a necessary element of the offence and by failing to recognize that inadvertent negligence . . . may be sufficient to establish the offence of driving ‘without due care and attention.'”
But in rejecting Crown prosecutor Matthew Griener’s request the appeal court reinstate the conviction, the judges found Davis also had erred in finding the accident itself was enough to establish Mooney was driving with a lack of due care and attention. “While he stated the Crown must prove that the appellant ‘drove carelessly,’ he did not fully consider the extent to which lack of ‘due care and attention’ was an element of the offence that had to be established by the Crown beyond a reasonable doubt.”