Appeals based on credibility

Today's decision in R. v. J.W.J., 2009 ONCA 791 reminds us that a trial judge's view of credibility is to be given great weight.  Merely because another judge might have decided differently does not ground an appeal:

 

… It is well settled by prior decisions of this court including but, not only, R. v. Howe (2005), 192 C.C.C. (3d) 480, at para. 49, and R. v. T.(T.), [2009] O.J. No. 3388, at para. 31, that it is not enough to show that a different trial judge could have reached a different credibility assessment, that the trial judge failed to say something he could have said in assessing the credibility of the witnesses, or that the trial judge failed to expressly set out legal principles relevant to credibility assessment.  In this case, nothing that was said or left unsaid demonstrates that any such differential standard was applied to the evidence of the two principal witnesses.