WHITBY -- Durham police seriously breached the constitutional rights of a Whitby man during a drug investigation, a Superior Court judge said in tossing out charges against him Monday.

Cops were acting solely on a hunch and denied Roland Liebregts the most basic of rights afforded to him under the Charter of Rights when they apprehended and questioned him near his Taunton Road home in the early morning hours of Sept. 23, 2005, Justice Barry MacDougall said in his ruling.

“I find the violations of the applicant’s Charter rights were serious,” the judge said, shortly before dismissing charges that included possession of a substance for the purpose of trafficking.

The ruling was hailed by defence lawyer Jacqueline An, who said Durham police handled the investigation “very badly.”

“Today justice has been served,” Ms. An said. “This whole case was a test of our constitution.”

During a charter application earlier this month Justice MacDougall heard testimony from Durham officers who said they found Mr. Liebregts emerging from a cornfield clutching a flashlight after they’d responded to the area for a suspicious person report.

Skeptical of Mr. Liebregts’s explanation that he was checking the property in the wake of a rash of burglaries, an officer detained him in a police cruiser for more than half an hour, eventually extracting a confession that a greenhouse on his property held more than 1,000 marijuana plants.

Justice MacDougall ruled that the detention was unconstitutional, as police had no proof of criminal activity. Incriminating statements Mr. Liebregts made in the cruiser and during a videotaped interview were inadmissible at trial, the judge ruled. He said police should have ceased their questioning after the man asked to speak to a lawyer.

“In my view the admission of this ... evidence would further bring the administration of justice into disrepute,” Justice MacDougall said in his ruling, delivered Monday afternoon at the Whitby courthouse.

Ms. An said outside court the judge’s findings are consistent with the spirit of the Charter.

“What we’re talking about is an individual’s right to move freely,” she said. “Once they hold you, the police have to have more than suspicion.

“They grabbed him until he made a confession.”

Mr. Liebregts, 60, has no criminal record. He lost his job after news of the case broke and has lived with the prospect of his property being forfeited under the Province’s Civil Remedies Act, which allows for the seizure and resale of properties used in the commission of crime.

Mr. Liebregts said he grew the marijuana for an organization which distributed it to AIDS and cancer patients.