Royal Newfoundland Constabulary Const. Carl Douglas Snelgrove arrives at the provincial Supreme Court building in St. John's on Saturday, May 15, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sarah Smellie
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – The Supreme Court of Canada will not hear an appeal from a Newfoundland police officer convicted of sexually assaulting a woman in her home in 2014 while he was on duty.
The decision Thursday from the country’s highest court closes Royal Newfoundland Constabulary officer Carl Douglas Snelgrove’s last avenue of appeal and clears the way for him to go to prison.
A jury found him guilty in provincial Supreme Court in 2021 following a mistrial the year before and a successful appeal of an acquittal in 2017. He was sentenced to four years in jail but has been out on bail pending Thursday’s decision.
As is customary, the court did not provide a reason for dismissing his application to appeal.
The case has gripped the province since it first began in 2017, with Snelgrove’s victim testifying in three separate trials about the night he raped her in her living room. The court heard Snelgrove was on duty when he drove the woman home from a night out with friends in downtown St. John’s and then helped her get into her apartment when she couldn’t find her keys.
She was 21 at the time.
The woman’s name is protected by a publication ban and she became known in the province as Jane Doe. Her supporters regularly demonstrated outside the provincial Supreme Court in the province’s capital, expressing their anger and solidarity as the case slowly moved through the court system.
Inside the courtroom, she testified confidently, sometimes through tears, as she was forced to repeatedly recount the details of her assault.
“You gotta know, this is this man’s life, right?” Snelgrove’s defence lawyer, Randy Piercey, asked her at one point during her testimony in May 2021, referring to the police officer.
“Yes, I do know that,” she quickly replied. “This has been six years of my life, as well.”
Lloyd Strickland, the Crown prosecutor at the trial, told reporters he was “in awe” of Jane Doe and her resolve to see the proceedings through.
Snelgrove has been suspended without pay from the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary since charges were laid in 2015, the force in a statement after Thursday’s decision.
“The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary confirms that the criminal proceedings are complete and the public complaints process can now proceed,” Const. James Cadigan said. The public complaints process will determine whether he loses his job.
Since Snelgrove’s conviction in 2021, several women, including a Royal Newfoundland Constabulary officer, have approached St. John’s lawyer Lynn Moore to say they, too, were the victims of sexual assault or misconduct at the hands of members of the force. Moore filed two civil lawsuits in 2022 against the province on behalf of some of the women.
She said at the time that the women opted for civil suits in part because they lost faith in the criminal justice system as they watched what Jane Doe went through in court.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 29, 2024.
