The Overdose Call

Someone overdosed. Emergency help was called, and the Accused stayed at the scene rather than leaving. When police arrived they arrested him for simple possession of a controlled substance. The search that followed his arrest produced a cache of firearms, firearm parts, ammunition, and identity-fraud evidence. He was never charged with drug possession - only with the firearms and fraud offences that the search uncovered. He argued that the Good Samaritan provision in the drug legislation, which gives immunity from being charged or convicted of simple possession to a person who seeks help at or remains at an overdose scene, made the arrest itself unlawful, so that everything found in the search that followed had to be excluded. The Crown argued that the immunity protects a person from charge and conviction, but says nothing about arrest, and that in any event the guns were far too serious to exclude.