Ottawa:
Canada's top court on Thursday quashed evidence from a police sting that helped secure guilty verdicts against a man tried for the murders of his twin daughters a ruling which now casts hundreds of convictions in doubt.
The Newfoundland man had been tricked by undercover police into confessing the double murders to a fictitious mob boss.
He now faces the possibility of a new trial, but his lawyers told local media that without the confession, he would likely be set free.
The Supreme Court of Canada said such sting operations "run the risk of being abusive" and can lead to "unreliable confessions" that have resulted in past wrongful convictions.
The justices also said use of such evidence "sullies the accused's character and, in doing so, carries with it the risk of prejudice."
While the court warned of the need for judges to be vigilant against abuse, it did not go as far as to ban the tactic.
Instead the ruling attempts to strike "the best balance" between the safeguarding rights of the accused and "ensuring the police have the tools they need to investigate serious crime," the court said.
The defendant became the target of the police operation two years after the August 2002 drowning deaths of his daughters.
Police early on suspected the father, but lacked evidence to support charges. So undercover officers recruited him into a fictitious criminal organization, wined and dined him, and eventually set up a meeting with the crime boss who teased a confession out of him.
The court threw out the confession, saying the suspect had been "unemployed and socially isolated" at the time, and might have said anything in a misguided attempt to impress the mob boss or to earn the trust of his new associates.
"Thought must be given to the kinds of police tactics we, as a society, are prepared to condone in pursuit of the truth," the court said.
Canadian police in the 1990s began using the sort of operations singled out by the court in its ruling.
Officials said that the tactic by 2008 had been employed more than 350 times, leading to hundreds of convictions.