Update: Judge rules on latest challenge in Sagmoen trial

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It was the third time she overruled evidence concerns raised by the defence.

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It means evidence gathered by police from the truck Sagmoen was driving at the time of his arrest in 2017, can now be used in his trial for threatening a sex worker near Falkland in 2017.

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A B.C. Supreme Court justice expects to make a ruling later today on the latest challenge of evidence by Curtis Sagmoen’s lawyer.

Sagmoen, 38, is facing four charges, stemming from an incident where he allegedly threatened a sex worker with a gun near Falkland in 2017.

He also faces one charge of possession of a controlled substance.

Lawyer Lisa Jean Helps is challenging the lawfulness of Sagmoen’s arrest by police in 2017, claiming it was not based on reasonable or probable grounds, and violated his Charter rights.

Helps made her arguments last week for not allowing the evidence from that arrest in the trial.

Crown lawyer Simone McCallum was summing up her arguments to Justice Alison Beames Monday morning.

“Reasonable grounds can be formed on the basis of the cumulative effect of several pieces of information, even if no single piece of information on its own is sufficient enough to justify an arrest,” McCallum, who was joined by co-counsel Juan O’Quinn, said on Monday.

McCallum said while there was not “one single piece of evidence prior to the arrest that, on its own, would have been sufficient to ground the arrest,” the cumulative whole of the information police had, “was more than sufficient.”

The voir dire hearing, which examines the admissibility of evidence, is one of several challenges made by the defence prior to actual evidence in the trial being presented.

If Justice Beames rules the arrest violated Sagmoen’s rights, all subsequent evidence — including what was seized in the vehicle search — would be excluded from the trial.

Beames earlier rejected defence challenges of a video-taped interview between Sagmoen and a police officer, and the warrant police used to search Sagmoen’s family property.