Charges dropped against two pandemic protestors as trial was set to start | CBC News

Charges against two people accused of violating pandemic restrictions at a Moncton grocery store were dropped Friday as their trial on the nearly three-year-old allegations was set to start.

Nicholas DeAngelis and Britney Green appeared by phone in Moncton provincial court where Crown prosecutor Logan Landry asked for charges related to events on Dec. 31, 2020, to be withdrawn.

They faced charges alleging they violated the province’s Emergency Measures Act by not wearing a mask, which was required in public spaces at the time, and criminal charges of mischief, causing a disturbance, obstructing police and resisting police.

Landry told Judge Brigitte Volpé that the Crown had determined that a defence of “legally induced error” would be available for the two, and as a result there would be no reasonable prospect of conviction on the mask charges. Landry didn’t elaborate on the nature of the induced error.

The judge withdrew those, and Landry then said because those were withdrawn that “we feel it is not in the public interest” to pursue the criminal charges.

“Ok, thank you very much,” DeAngelis said after the judge withdrew the charges.

The events that led to the charges were at the centre of a trial that began in May of last year for another person, David Robert West of Riverview. 

At his trial, witnesses testified that a group of four to five people walked into the Superstore on Main Street without masks. Police were called, eventually resulting in a scuffle after officers questioned their claimed mask exemptions. 

West’s case is ongoing. Green on Friday asked the judge if his charges would also be dropped, but Volpé said she had no information about that case as it’s being handled separately.

DeAngelis, Green and West were previously acquitted by a judge in cases that followed their arrest at a protest against pandemic restrictions in front of Moncton City Hall in January 2021.