Unreasonable verdict

R. v. Lee, 2010 SCC 52, just released, repeats the well know principle that a verdict will be set aside as unreasonable only where a properly instructed trier of fact, acting judicially, could not have arrived at that verdict. The Court holds:

[4] The suggestion that the majority of the Court of Appeal erred in applying the test for unreasonable verdict set out in Corbett v. The Queen, [1975] 2 S.C.R. 275, and recently upheld in R. v. Biniaris, 2000 SCC 15, [2000] 1 S.C.R. 381, rather than the test for appellate intervention where there has been a misapprehension of evidence as in R. v. Lohrer, 2004 SCC 80, [2004] 3 S.C.R. 732, must be rejected. The majority of the Court considered, with one minor exception, that what the appellant alleged to be misapprehensions of the evidence were simply different interpretations of the evidence than those adopted by the judge. We agree. The majority view, other than a peripheral controversy about the precise time of the events, is supported by an attentive reading of the record. The timing issue, in our view, is of no consequence. The verdict was one that a properly instructed jury acting judicially could reasonably have rendered (Corbett, at p. 282; see also R. v. Yebes, [1987] 2 S.C.R. 168, at p. 185).