jim stewart

Crown Prosecutor at Alberta Crown Prosecution Service, Government of Alberta

Jim, after three important years in Ellis House under David McCarthy as Housemaster, graduated from Brentwood College in 1995. The following September he started an Arts undergraduate degree at McGill University in Montreal. After a very harsh Montreal winter, complete with ice storms and constitutional disharmony, Jim transferred to the tranquility of the University of Victoria in 1996, where he completed an Arts degree in 1999 with a major in History.

Having learned his lesson about the cold, Jim bought a very warm jacket and moved to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in the fall of 2000 to pursue his LLB at the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Law. Jim graduated from U of S in 2003 and, having secured articles at a firm called Bishop & McKenzie LLP, moved to Edmonton in the spring of 2003 to start a law career. Now in private practice, Jim’s focus was on civil litigation. Mindful of the fact that you only get one life, Jim pondered a future that did not involve billable hours. After three years, Jim left private practice having secured a position with Alberta Justice in the Edmonton Prosecutions Branch as a Crown Prosecutor.

The office of the Crown Prosecutor is responsible for prosecuting all offences charged by the police under the Criminal Code of Canada. Like all fresh hires to the Crown, Jim started his prosecutorial experience prosecuting a wide array of uncomplicated offences ranging from property theft to impaired driving to domestic violence. Jim’s practice began to evolve to include offences of serious violence. By 2010 Jim had prosecuted many serious offences including homicides and had developed an interest in prosecutions that involved organized crime/the use of wiretap as an evidence gathering technique. In September 2010 Jim transferred into the Organized Crime Unit of the Specialized Prosecutions Branch of Alberta Justice. In that unit, Jim had the opportunity to focus on prosecutions that were backed by complex investigations where either the target was a member of an organized crime group and/or the police required a wiretap in order to gather evidence. Jim’s prosecution highlights include the prosecutions of Clinton Mahoney for the murder of two rival drug dealers in the span of four days, Steven Vollrath for kidnapping and aggravated assault, Travis Edward Vader for the murder of two elderly travellers, James Othen for committing an assault while he was a member of the Calgary Police Service, and Shawn Wruck for the historical murder of his girlfriend. In 2018 Jim was appointed the leader of the Organized Crime Unit, representing Alberta on the National Wiretap Experts Committee and liaising with a variety of police services on all topics touching on wiretap and organized crime. In April 2020, in response to the opportunity presented by COVID-19, Jim transferred back to the Edmonton Prosecutions Branch to assist that office in its sweeping efforts to take advantage of an unprecedented pause in operations from March-July, 2020 to streamline processes and gain efficiencies.

Find Jim on Brentonian Connect