TORONTO -- An undercover police operation that resulted in an Ontario man confessing to a pair of murders and being convicted for the crimes was not a violation of his Charter rights, Ontario's top court has ruled.

Timothy Osmar of Thunder Bay was convicted of first-degree murder in March, 2002, in the beating and stabbing deaths of Raymond Greenwood in January, 1998, and Theodore Keeper one month later.

At issue was the so-called "Mr. Big" investigative technique, in which police officers pose as organized-crime figures to persuade a suspect to admit to a serious crime so he can join the organization.

Police suspected Mr. Osmar of the murders but weren't able to find anything incriminating against him, so they eventually devised the Mr. Big strategy. 

In order to be trusted to perform work for the purported criminal organization, Mr. Osmar told undercover officers in a secretly taped conversation that he killed Mr. Greenwood and Mr. Keeper.

Mr. Osmar appealed his conviction on the grounds that using his statements to the undercover officers as evidence violated the principle against self-incrimination in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

But the Ontario Court of Appeal cited two Supreme Court of Canada decisions in dismissing the argument, one of which concluded the right to silence in the Charter "is not infringed by undercover police operations where the suspect is not detained."

The Supreme Court and appeal courts in other provinces have held that statements made in the course of the Mr. Big strategy are admissible.

"This example of the Mr. Big strategy does not contain the elements of a real possibility of an unreliable confession because of abuse of power by a person in authority," the decision reads. "There was no abuse of power. The appellant was presented with an opportunity to obtain employment in a criminal organization, but he was not threatened or intimidated."

The evidence against Mr. Osmar largely consisted of the confession and testimony from an informant that Mr. Osmar threatened to kill him like he "killed those other two."