|
Wrongful
conviction round-up, 2004 | Rafay/Burns
| Dueck orders dirty sting on Wilf
Hathway to coerce confession where there is no probable cause
| Across
the country reports | Most recent
media reports | Chief Sabo apologizes
| Sermonette on the Static
Duo: McKillop and Quennell | Dueck
drops his appeal | < <
< | articles and editorials from Jan 6-9 (2004) | more
| Sabo's apology | Editorials: StarPhoenix,
Leader Post and National Post >
> > | National Post front page story, Jan. 10 >
> > | Coverage leading up to appeal court victory and
that victory > > >
December, 2004: Government
stalls appeal: seeks to intervene on its own behalf | Dueck walks away a wealthy man:
it seems no one has the will to make him account for his malicious
and criminal actions
-
- The Klassen
story
- Breaking
through to the public
-
What did Klassen case
cost?
Les MacPherson, The StarPhoenix,
July 17, 2004
The province finally has settled
the Klassen-Kvello malicious prosecution suit, but the stink
lingers on.
It won't dissipate anytime
soon, so long as the province keeps secret the amount of the
settlement. We only know that it's somewhere between the $14
million asked by the families and the $1 million initially offered
by the Justice Department. My guess is that it's a lot closer
to the latter than the former. The actual amount has been kept
secret, however, under the terms of an unconscionable confidentiality
agreement.
This is public money. Not government
money. Not Justice Department money. Public money. Our money.
How dare the government spend our money to fix its own grievous
mistakes and then refuse to tell us how much?
A quick recap: The Klassen
and Kvello families, 12 people in all, were wrongfully charged
and prosecuted 14 years ago for multiple counts of child sex
abuse. This in spite of there being no credible evidence against
any of them.
Subsequently exonerated, the
families filed and won a malicious prosecution suit against the
Crown prosecutor, the Saskatoon city police officer and the therapist
who were instrumental in the travesty. It is taxpayers, however,
who get the bill. And now we're told that the total will be forever
concealed. It's secrecy on top of arrogance on top of malice.
Who asked for the confidentiality
agreement, we do not know. That, too, is confidential. But we
can guess.
The Klassen and Kvello families
have nothing to hide. They've previously been very open and up-front.
The amount of the settlement is a measure of their innocence.
You'd think they'd want to trumpet the amount from the rooftops.
The provincial Justice Department, by way of comparison, has
been obstructionist all along. The amount of the settlement is
a measure of the prosecution's misconduct. Of course, the department
wants it kept secret. It's yet another in a continuing series
of huge embarrassments for Saskatchewan Justice.
The Klassen and Kvello families
cannot be faulted in any way for agreeing to non-disclosure of
the settlement. Having had their lives ruined for no good reason,
they owe nothing to anyone. The province, however, owes to the
public a duty of accountability. This is not exactly consistent
with a Justice Department spending large amounts of our money
in secret to fix a mess of its own making.
If we don't know the cost,
we can't know how badly the department screwed up. Unfortunately,
that seems to be exactly the point.
That the department would even
think of concealing this settlement suggests it has learned nothing
from this experience. Never mind the seemingly endless parade
of malicious prosecution suits, these being only the latest.
Never mind that the department is so far batting zero in defending
these suits. Never mind the millions paid out in settlements.
The thinking over there seems to be that it's business as usual.
It doesn't help appearances
that Matt Miazga, the senior Crown attorney who led the malicious
prosecution against the Klassen-Kvellos, remains on the job.
It helps even less that Justice Minister Frank Quennel has expressed
full confidence in Miazga, as have his fellow Crown prosecutors.
They all seem to think he did nothing wrong. This does not bode
well for anyone else in Saskatchewan who is falsely accused of
a crime.
Fortunately, the Court of Queen's
Bench has higher standards. Presiding Justice George Baynton
found Miazga in this case to be not only malicious but indifferent
to the truth. There could be no more damning indictment of an
officer of the court. But it's all hunky dory over at Justice,
where Miazga has not received so much as a reprimand. On the
contrary, he gets a vote of confidence from the justice minister,
among others. Meanwhile, taxpayers get stuck with the bill when
we weren't even at the restaurant. Now they want us to pay with
a blank cheque. It's pathological.
Oddly enough, there is no legislative
requirement that compels the province publicly to disclose its
spending on Justice Department cleanups or anything else. Provincial
Auditor Fred Wendel said in an interview that the settlement
cannot be hidden from his scrutiny, but making it public, or
not, is up to the government. He makes no secret of his own preference.
"Any payments of public
money should be made public," Wendel said. This would seem
self-evident to everyone in Saskatchewan, except the governing
New Democrats. What are the odds?
If the settlement is to be
revealed, it will have to be dragged out.
An access-to-information request
for the terms of the deal is already before Information and Privacy
Commissioner Gary Dickson. He cannot compel the government to
reveal anything, however. All he can do is make recommendations.
His powers are further limited by the numerous legislated exemptions
the government can use to deny access requests. Among them is
solicitor-client privilege. Never mind that solicitor and client
in this case both work for us, the public. Supposedly.
Another attempt to expose the
secret spending will come this fall, when the legislature's public
accounts committee reconvenes.
"The Justice Department
mishandled this case and mishandled it badly," said committee
chair Elwin Hermanson.
How badly, no one can know
without knowing the amount of the settlement, the Saskatchewan
Party MLA said in an interview.
The public accounts committee
is supposed to review all government spending, but a majority
of committee members are government MLAs. They can be expected
to follow the party line and block any attempt to make public
the embarrassing cost of Justice Department misconduct.
It is small comfort to know
that this government is still capable of being embarrassed.
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2004
Prosecutions need more
care
The StarPhoenix Editorial,
March 30, 2004
Somehow, the message has to
get through to child welfare workers as well as police and justice
officials in Saskatchewan that their zealotry to lock up suspected
abusers can end up damaging the very children they are duty-bound
to protect.
As The StarPhoenix reported
on Saturday, the latest case of hurried justice gone awry involves
a rural family torn apart, based on officials acting on allegations
of abuse made by two gravely troubled children who'd been adopted
by a farm couple.
While no one disputes that
social workers and police have a duty to investigate thoroughly
any time a child alleges abuse, there have been enough recent
cases in the province of tremendous injustice inflicted on families
over baseless abuse prosecutions that caution has to be the watchword
for everyone involved.
From the malicious prosecution
case won by the Klassen and Kvello families to the nightmare
visited on innocent individuals in the Martensville sex abuse
allegations nightmare, the point has been underlined for public
and justice officials to conduct their business in a reasonable
manner.
Justice George Baynton, in
his eminently sensible Klassen case ruling -- now under appeal
by the Crown prosecutors and a therapist excoriated in the judgment
-- made the point bluntly:
"The recantations and
the recent testimony of the children also demonstrate to social
services officials, workers and personnel, as well as to police
officers and prosecutors, the real threat to society of overzealous
child protection responses fuelled by politically correct or
trendy ideologies of the day that are relied upon as a justification
to overrule objectivity, reason, common sense and tested and
tried legal traditions.
"These kinds of responses
not only jeopardize the freedom of innocent people, but they
indirectly harm, and at times even jeopardize, the safety and
welfare of the very children that are the subject of protection
efforts."
As the weekend SP report shows,
Baynton's message can't be repeated often enough until it gets
through.
While the details in the case
of the adoptive family may not measure up to the malice Baynton
found in the Klassen ruling, the impact of the charges on the
family remains devastating. Along with their reputations, the
adoptive couple lost their farm, their home and four of their
five adopted children, one of whom has moved from Saskatchewan,
vowing never to return.
It's all the result of an investigative
process that was shoddy at best -- one which saw the father in
the family charged with abuse without benefit of so much as an
interview by the investigators, only to have the charge stayed
15 months later. The charges against him and two boys in the
family were based solely on the testimony of the two adopted
girls, apparently with little regard for their credibility.
One boy was found not guilty
17 months later, when the judge found testimony against him by
his sole accuser confusing and contradictory. The other youth's
conviction of December 2002 was overturned in March, after Justice
Gerald Allbright concluded that relevant evidence about the girl
complainant's sexual background had not been available to the
trial judge.
Among the questions that remain
unanswered is whether anyone at social services withheld the
relevant evidence and why the case proceeded to trial when it
appears that, almost a year after the family was torn apart and
four children were taken away, welfare officials remained unsure
whether the girls' allegations were believable.
Experts note that children
affected by fetal alcohol spectrum disorders tend to provide
answers they think their questioners want, by picking up on body
language or other clues. Unless the interviews are done carefully
by persons well-versed in FAS, the results gleaned by investigators
might be of little forensic value.
In this case, as with too many
others, it appears that the good intentions of welfare workers,
police and legal officials cannot be a substitute for dispassionate
investigation, sound training and working with families to provide
the help they need instead of rushing to prosecute. Ripping apart
a loving adoptive family and fostering out two girls who could
most benefit from the stability it provided hardly constitutes
child protection or a social service.
---
"Democracy cannot be maintained
without its foundation: free public opinion and free discussion
throughout the nation of all matters affecting the state within
the limits set by the criminal code and the common law."
-The Supreme Court of Canada,
1938
© Copyright 2004 The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon)
Wright inquiry helping
already
The StarPhoenix, Monday,
March 22, 2004
If there's anything positive
to arise from the public inquiry into the freezing death 13 years
ago of Neil Stonechild -- a grim hearing that occupied about
10 weeks, spread over six months, and shone a light into the
darkest crevices of Saskatoon's police service -- it comes from
a few promising signs of change.
While it's tough to predict
what conclusions and recommendations inquiry commissioner Justice
David Wright might offer in the wake of sometimes contradictory,
often disturbing and frequently incredible testimony from a variety
of sources, it's easy to support Stella Bignell's prayer that
no other parent should again have to cope with the same situation.
Given some recent moves by
administrators of a police service whose credibility has been
shattered not only by the Stonechild affair but the deplorable
conduct of a few officers that's branded the force nationally
as racist, Bignell's call for change might not be in vain.
After admitting to Wright that
he misled the public in May 2003 by making false statements to
the media concerning two city cops implicated in Stonechild's
death, deputy police chief Dan Wiks has been placed on administrative
leave pending an investigation.
And Const. Brad Senger, one
of two officers implicated by an RCMP taskforce investigating
the circumstances of Stonechild's death, faces disciplinary action
after admitting that he'd obstructed justice by falsifying a
breathalyser test result in another case.
However belated, the message
coming at least from the upper echelons of the beleaguered police
service is that any police misconduct will be taken seriously.
It's a welcome departure from an arrogant attitude of infallibility
that has permeated police ranks for too long, a mindset even
now evident in the comments of police association president Stan
Goertzen regarding Wiks.
"Did he deliberately try
to mislead (media)? I'd be real surprised. Should he have been
clearer? Possibly."
That Goertzen's comment came
after Wiks admitted to Wright that he'd misled an SP reporter
about the RCMP's recommendation to charge Senger and Larry Hartwig
(Senger's partner in checking out a complaint about Stonechild
on the night of his death), indicates an attitude among cops
of infallibility that needs a quick change.
One need not look far beyond
evidence from the inquiry and at least one related incident of
police conduct to realize just how dismissive the service has
become of the public it's supposed to serve and how long the
problem has persisted.
Consider that city police set
up a surveillance team outside the inquiry locations, with plainclothes
officers keeping tabs on those attending the inquiry, including
taking videotape. Rather than a measure to "provide the
best security and safety to anybody and everybody who could be
attending the inquiry itself," as a police spokesman suggested,
this seemed an intimidation tactic to discourage citizens from
watching a proceeding that proved embarrassing to the force.
Starting with the testimony
from former chief Dave Scott to the evidence of Keith Jarvis,
lead investigator in the Stonechild case, it's easy to understand
why the police service might have found the inquiry distasteful.
Testimony by Scott, like that
of many other cops who appeared before Wright, revealed a vague
memory of the Stonechild case. The force's media relations officer
at the time of the death, Scott in his testimony showed that
police misled the public by dismissing the Stonechild family's
concerns by claiming that "a tremendous amount of work"
went into the investigation.
Jarvis's testimony showed that
he'd spent less than three days investigating the death -- a
demonstration of shoddy police work at best and, at worst, a
callous disregard for the mysterious death of a young aboriginal
man who the RCMP later concluded likely was in Saskatoon police
custody immediately before his demise.
Ironically, it was Scott who
a decade later as chief had to suspend two police officers who
went on to serve jail terms for abandoning a trouble-making Native
man on the city's outskirts, in the vicinity where the frozen
bodies of two aboriginal men had been discovered just days before.
The RCMP investigation, the Stonechild inquiry and the national
infamy that surrounds Saskatoon's police service have their genesis
in what officers Ken Munson and Dan Hatchen did to Darrell Night
that January night in 2000.
The Wright inquiry's value
well exceeds its $2-million cost, if only by bringing about an
attitude adjustment at the Saskatoon Police Service.
"Democracy cannot be maintained
without its foundation: free public opinion and free discussion
throughout the nation of all matters affecting the state within
the limits set by the criminal code and the common law."
-The Supreme Court of Canada,
1938
© Copyright 2004 The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon)
Quennell must do right
thing
The StarPhoenix, January
17, 2004
Anyone who saw the pained look
on Saskatoon police Chief Russell Sabo's face when he announced
an external investigation of one of his officers knows how tough
it can be to do the right thing.
Sabo not only stood in front
of the TV cameras and Saskatoon media to say the scathing assessment
by Justice George Baynton of Supt. Brian Dueck's handling of
the Klassen case made it clear the chief needed to apologize
to the victims but he later faced Richard Klassen in person to
repeat his contrition.
Given the rocky road Sabo's
department has travelled over the past few years, doing the right
thing was more than a public duty. It was imperative to bring
confidence back in a service that is essential to the well-being
of Saskatoon residents.
That's not to say that Sabo
abandoned one of his officers in order to do the politically
expedient. He placed Dueck on medical leave and hired an outside
law firm to do a complete review of the officer's work.
No public servant should expect
more or less.
But by making it clear that
Dueck would not be working in his capacity as a police officer
until his conduct, so roundly condemned by Baynton, would be
reviewed, Sabo told Saskatoon citizens that he believed their
interests were paramount.
It also didn't take Sabo long
to decide -- he read the 189-page judgment and knew, whatever
the outcome of the external investigation, he had to apologize
and make it clear to the people he serves that they could trust
his department not to repeat the mistakes of one officer.
It's unfortunate that Attorney
General Frank Quennell doesn't seem to understand the importance
of doing the right thing. He insists the government is backing
an appeal of Baynton's decision because it believes the judgment
changes the standard for malicious prosecution.
Fair enough, but it's one thing
to appeal the case even though Quennell has observed that the
government is not party to the malicious prosecution civil suit
filed by the Klassen family. It's another to agree that the evidence
before Baynton was proper and the family is innocent, but proceed
with an appeal before settling on restitution. It's particularly
egregious to do so when it breaks an agreement among lawyers
that compensation would proceed even if there were an appeal.
Quennell and the department
could have exercised their moral responsibility to do the right
thing by apologizing and working on a formula for compensation
without putting at risk the attempt to seek legal clarity on
what constitutes malicious prosecution.
Quennell appears confused about
who he serves. A minister of the Crown owes his primary loyalty
not to the party or to the bureaucracy but to the people. Given
the overwhelming indictment in Baynton's judgment -- and given
that even Quennell isn't taking issue with the recognition the
Klassens were innocent or with the evidence -- it is important
that he reach the inescapable conclusion already made by most
of Canada.
His words made it clear that
he puts greater emphasis on the personal relationship he's had
with some of the defendants than he does on the wisdom of the
judge who weighed all the evidence in the case.
Sabo's decision to apologize,
on the other hand, was clearly a recognition that doing the honourable
thing won't threaten justice but will bring integrity and confidence
back to the entire force.
The longer Quennell takes to
decide to apologize and issue compensation, the greater the personal
and financial cost will be the Klassens and Saskatchewan taxpayers.
The longer confidence in the minister and his department is strained,
the harder it will be to regain it.
It has been 18 days since Justice
Baynton made his ruling. How much longer, Mr. Minister, before
its implications set in?
---
Steven Gibb, Gerry Klein, Les
MacPherson, Sarath Peiris and Lawrence Thoner collaborate in
writing SP editorials
---
"Democracy cannot be maintained
without its foundation: free public opinion and free discussion
throughout the nation of all matters affecting the state within
the limits set by the criminal code and the common law."
-The Supreme Court of Canada,
1938
© Copyright 2004 The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon)
Gov't owes Klassen family
an apology for witch hunt
Bob Hughes, The Leader-Post,
January 12, 2004
The voice was empty of meaningful
words. The voice of the government that leads the province threw
out words that were almost cruel in their emptiness. All anybody
wanted to hear, all anybody expected to hear were two words.
Those two words would have meant so much to the people the government,
in the end, was responsible for hurting so badly.
The words were, "We're
sorry."
The government refused to allow
those words to pass through its lips. It chose instead to cower.
The government has lost its conscience, and has become bigger
than anything. The government, I heard yesterday afternoon through
the anger of somebody, is showing its moral ineptness, its emptiness,
its ignorance.
The government should have
apologized to Richard Klassen and everybody else who had their
reputations ruined, their lives thrown into utter disarray, because
of a ruthless persecution by a crown prosecutor, the police and
a child therapist. There is nobody in this province who does
not know what happened. Everybody knows that in 1991, more than
10 years ago, 16 people, including Klassen, were charged when
three children -- a boy and his twin sisters -- began to tell
stories of abuse in their foster home. The children told stories
of being forced to engage in sexual acts, drinking blood, eating
eyeballs and watching newborns being killed and buried. It was
bizarre, so incredible, but a government prosecutor bought into
it, and war was declared on an innocent family.
One person pleaded guilty to
sexual assault. Three others were convicted, but the convictions
were overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada. The charges against
the other 12 were stayed.
In a 98-page decision last
week, Judge George Baynton said Crown prosecutor Matthew Miazga,
Saskatoon police officer Brian Dueck and child therapist Carol
Bunko-Ruys maliciously prosecuted 12 members of the Klassen family,
even when it was obvious the evidence could not be supported
by fact. It did not matter in 1991. The witch hunt was started
and it was allowed to continue.
The scathing decision by the
judge last week threw the ball right into the front door of the
provincial government. The Department of Justice reacted with
a shrug. The justice minister, Frank Quennell, voted into the
government by the people of Saskatoon, said the government was
not going to apologize and that none would be coming.
Nobody knows any more what
this government is all about. It wears all the tattered signs
of a government that has lost its way, that after four straight
terms in office is tired and bankrupt of ideas, and ignores the
opportunity to do something that should have been done. Apologize
to the Klassen family. Instead, it emerged from the marble palace
wrapped in the flimsy shroud of ignorance and that is not playing
well in this province.
Across this country, nobody
can believe the coldness the government is showing to the Klassen
family in the wake of last week's scathing indictment found in
the white hot language of the judge's decision. How could it
ever happen that the Saskatchewan justice system was allowed
to go so unchecked and so unstopped?
There seems almost an ignorance
in the halls of the government over just exactly what the judge's
decision said. There never were reliable grounds for the prosecution
of the case to proceed, and yet it did proceed, and lives were
ruined, and innocent people were labeled as pedophiles, perhaps
the most vile of names we have. And it is the provincial government
which is ultimately responsible for it.
Justice was not served in Saskatchewan.
Explain that.
Explain how it is that when
it is obvious to everybody what happened here, the provincial
government does not get it.
The ruthlessness of the persecution
of the Klassen people seemed even to stun the judge.
The truth was put into a dark
closet.
The government is running the
lives of almost one million people in Saskatchewan. They got
to run our lives for another four years by using fear against
the voters in the election of Nov. 5. They made the voter afraid
of what would happen to the province if they ever allowed the
Saskatchewan Party to get into office.
"Trust us," the government
said.
The people did, just the way
Richard Klassen trusted the justice system and figured he would
get a fair hearing. It took more than a decade before he was
fully able to feel vindicated. And for this, he gets no apology
from the government.
The NDP, the party that wants
everybody to believe it is the only party of social conscience,
is looking like a government that now into its fourth straight
term of office is dead. It looks like a government that has risen
above everybody and has lost touch.
Great!
- Bob Hughes is Executive Editor
of the Leader-Post.
© Copyright 2004 The Leader-Post (Regina)
Quennell typifies NDP
arrogance
Murray Mandryk, Saskatchewan
News Network; Regina Leader-Post, January 10, 2004
"I also read pages and
heard hours of testimony of (police officer Brian) Dueck, (Crown
prosecutor Matt) Miazga and (Crown prosecutor Sonja) Hansen.
The same that I said about (therapist Carol) Bunko-Ruys applies
to each of them. In my respectful view, the lack of any regret
or remorse for what was done to the plaintiffs is a strong indicator
of malice on the part of each of the defendants, including Hansen."
-- Justice George Baynton in
his 196-page decision on the Klassen malicious prosecution case.
Maybe it's specifically a Department
of Justice thing -- a department that tends to isolate itself
from the normal rules of conduct (and, sometimes, the normal
civility) which make other government departments significantly
more accountable to the public they serve.
Or maybe it's part of a much
bigger problem with an aging and increasingly more arrogant NDP
government. Despite earning a renewed mandate just two months
ago, it seems more out of touch with its public than ever.
Whichever the case, the way
in which rookie Justice Minister Frank Quennell and his department
handled the government's response to the wrong done to 12 people
in the Klassen case has greatly harmed not only the government's
credibility but public faith in the justice system.
The problem isn't so much that
the department has decided to appeal Baynton's eloquent ruling
on malice, which certainly underlined the "lack of any regret
or remorse for what was done to the plaintiffs."
Actually, the department has
the same right to appeal as any losing defendant would. And,
distasteful as it may seem just now, the department is obligated
to look out for the interest of taxpayers who will foot the damage
bill in this civil case.
Moreover, the department has
legitimate concerns about the chill the ruling may place on Crown
prosecutors.
Despite all the complexities
accompanying rulings such as this, there's always one really
good place to start when attempting to understand them: the truth.
In this case, the truth is
that 12 innocent people were accused by Saskatchewan Justice
of the most heinous crimes imaginable, before Miazga stayed the
charges against them saying the child complainants were too traumatized
to testify.
"The real scandal, however
is the travesty of justice that was visited upon 12 of those
individuals, the plaintiffs, in this civil action by branding
them as pedophiles even though each of them was innocent of the
horrendous allegations and the criminal offence charged against
them," Baynton wrote on the first page of his decision.
And from Page 1 on, the judge
launched into a damning indictment of the Justice Department's
handling of the entire case.
Richard Klassen and the 11
others were clearly victimized by a therapist acting as police
investigator and a police officer acting as a social worker.
They were victimized by those who over-zealously applied select
parts of the "Saskatoon protocol" on handling sensitive
investigations involving child abuse, as they succumbed to hysteria
over devil cults and the reigning politically correct notion
that children, regardless of how severely damaged, always tell
the truth. "Duped" was the word Baynton frequently
used to describe the investigators.
Meanwhile, the investigators,
who supposedly had the interest of the children at heart, seemed
not at all alarmed by the incest occurring among them, he noted.
Equally victimized were the children who were not protected from
themselves.
Baynton's judgment was almost
as critical of the Crown's conduct -- not least Miazga's decision
to pursue the charges after another Crown prosecutor (unbeknownst
to Miazga at the time) had already told Dueck there wasn't sufficient
evidence to lay charges.
It is crystal clear from Baynton's
decision that the justice system failed these people.
The truth is that the 12 were
victims of police and prosecutors who saw patterns of behaviour
that simply weren't there. The 12 were victims of a collective
tunnel vision and a severe breakdown of the justice process.
Senior officials at the Regina head office, detached from the
investigation, failed properly to review the case before the
charges were laid.
So, the government's call here
should have been simple. The right thing to do was not hard to
see.
The first words out of Quennell's
mouth on Thursday should have been: "I'm sorry." Richard
Klassen and the others are clearly owed an apology for his department's
failings.
Instead, we heard Quennell
stress that "no apology" would be forthcoming.
"It's not the position
-- or practical -- for my office to be extending apologies where
prosecutions don't proceed," Quennell explained to reporters
in Regina. "That's how the system works."
Well, frankly, sir, the system
didn't work. Your office failed these 12 people. And instead
of being honest and forthright Quennell and his department continue
to stonewall on any admission that they could possibly have made
a mistake.
Arrogance.
© Copyright 2004 The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon)
People have every right to wonder about the justice
system
Bob Hughes The Leader-Post,
January 10, 2004
The snow fell softly in the
morning, wedding itself to the naked limbs of trees, covering
cars parked outside, bringing fresh light to the dull sky. On
Wascana Lake, in one of the most amazing of scenes ever pictured
in this city, huge trucks carrying dirt roll along the makeshift
dirt roads, the deepening of the lake continuing 24 hours a day,
seven days a week. The choreography of this operation is amazing
to the untrained eye.
It is just another day in the
life of the city.
The newspaper continues to
fill its letters to the editor page with words about the closing
of the three city libraries, and it remains a story that will
not go away until some kind of final resolution is found, which
in this mess, may well be impossible to find. The process has
sabotaged sensibility, and the nerves are frayed everywhere.
The return to reasonable weather
eases the short tempers that were taking over in the city that
is expected to be the leader among all major Canadians cities
in economic growth in 2004. This, from the Conference Board of
Canada. It is much better than hearing that we will lead the
country in auto thefts, break-ins and murders. It is much better
than hearing the provincial government is looking at increase
the provincial sales tax.
But there is enough in the
news that is happening to cause the stomach to turn and the head
to shake.
The people in the streets who
look to the judicial system to protect them are left to scratch
their heads and wonder just what is going on. There is the judge
who, because of the Canadian Charter of Rights, found himself
with no choice but to side with a man charged by RCMP after his
vehicle was searched and drugs, drugs and more drugs were found.
The man, who police felt was transporting the drugs from British
Columbia to be sold somewhere to young people, was set free because
his rights were violated. Even though the car the man was driving
was filled with illegal drugs, it was not shown in court that
the police had reason to search his car. Did they give him back
his drugs? The people wonder, just whose rights are being protected
here and whose rights aren't being protected?
By late morning yesterday,
the clouds had left and the warmth from the sun was licking off
the snow that fell on vehicles. The provincial government stands
true to its stance of refusing to apologize to the Klassen family,
whose lives were left in tatters by one of the most vicious and
misguided law enforcement investigations in the history of this
province. It was nothing short of a character assassination of
the worst kind, an unwarranted attack that was sped along to
its shameful finish by people in the justice system.
The shame of that investigation
and all that came spewing forth in the lies that were so easily
told and more easily believed from so-called victims covers the
whole province. That it happened in the same city where police
drove Indians to the outskirts of Saskatoon in the deadly cold
of winter and left them there to fend for themselves brings a
carpet of disgrace with it, one that will not easily be brushed
clean.
Somewhere along the line, the
justice system has lost its footing and now seems stumbling far
too often from one disaster to another, from one miscarriage
of justice to another, and now that it is all coming out and
now that it is being condemned, you can only hope that something
will be done to straighten out this mess.
If we cannot rely on the police
and on the courts to protect us, then where do we turn?
The day that started dark and
with snow and then was bathed in a January thaw carried with
it the worries of the people who watch the news and read the
papers and find themselves unable to believe what they are reading
and hearing.
There seemed to be no end to
it, no end at all.
- Bob Hughes is Executive Editor
of the Leader-Post.
© Copyright 2004 The Leader-Post (Regina)
What is Regina thinking?
National Post Editorial,
January 10, 2004
In her 1999 book about freeing
her wrongly convicted son David, Joyce Milgaard recounts a chilling
quote from Saskatchewan prosecutor Serge Kujawa: "It doesn't
matter if Milgaard is innocent ... The whole judicial system
is at issue -- it's worth more than one person." Unfortunately,
these hard-hearted words appear to be an accurate description
of the Saskatchewan government's current attitude toward the
administration of justice.
After years of suffering false
accusations of sadistic abuse of their foster children, 12 members
of Saskatoon's Klassen family were vindicated this month when
a court found they'd been maliciously prosecuted. The presiding
judge called the case "a travesty of justice." This
is an understatement: The children concerned had publicly recanted
their fantastical accusations and the prosecution is said to
have ignored exculpatory evidence.
But the innocent family's relief
has been short-lived. In a move that has added another layer
of insult to the Klassens' injury, the Saskatchewan government
is refusing to apologize, and has announced it will back an appeal
of the malicious prosecution decision.
Such extraordinary insensitivity
to the victims of injustice has become a hallmark of Saskatchewan's
government. Although David Milgaard, the aforementioned innocent,
was released in 1992 after enduring 22 years of wrongful imprisonment
on murder charges, the province didn't commit to negotiating
a settlement, or to holding a public inquiry into his case, until
1997. And that inquiry has yet to take place.
Meanwhile, a separate inquiry
is underway to determine whether Saskatoon police were involved
in the death of an aboriginal 17-year-old found frozen to death
in a deserted area in 1990 after last being seen handcuffed and
bleeding in the back of a police cruiser. The inquiry was called
when similar deaths began to surface.
Given its poor track record
for respecting the individual rights of its citizens and keeping
the powers of its police and prosecutors in check, the Klassens'
exoneration would have been a perfect opportunity for the provincial
government and its new Justice Minister, Frank Quennell, to display
a fresh commitment to doing the right thing. A simple apology
for a decade of wrongfully persecuting the Klassens as pedophiles
would have gone a long way.
By instead calling for an appeal
that will again haul the wronged Klassen family back into court,
Saskatchewan has reaffirmed its reputation as a government more
concerned with saving face and its own authority than with the
people it is charged to protect.
© National Post 2004
Poor response to Klassen
case
The StarPhoenix, Friday,
January 09, 2004
From the decision to support
fully the prosecutor and a therapist excoriated in a court ruling
over a malicious prosecution of 12 innocent people to opting
to make the appeal announcement in Regina, Justice Minister Frank
Quennell and his government demonstrate they don't "get
it" about this troubling case.
Although he emphasized that
the government wasn't party to the civil suit by 12 plaintiffs
against Crown prosecutors Matthew Miazga and Sonja Hansen, the
estate of former prosecutions director Richard Quinney, Saskatoon
police officer Brian Dueck and child therapist Carol Bunko-Ruys,
Quennell put himself on the line with his unqualified support
of Miazga.
Quennell and government lawyer
Donald McKillop maintain that Queen's Bench Justice George Baynton
made "significant errors" in interpreting law and factual
evidence when he found that Miazga, Dueck and Bunko-Ruys acted
maliciously in pursuing child abuse charges against the Klassen
family members.
Even though Quennell made it
abundantly clear that all 12 individuals were absolutely innocent
-- Miazga and the Justice Department stayed charges against them
after a hellish year of uncertainty and suffering with the explanation
that the child witnesses were too traumatized to proceed -- he
saw no reason to apologize to them, as Saskatoon police chief
Russ Sabo has done.
The minister's rationale that
"it wasn't practical" to apologize to the 12 because
his department almost daily stays proceedings in many of the
84,000 charges it handles annually is nonsense.
It's not every day that a court
finds that a Crown lawyer had abdicated his "legal and professional
responsibilities" in a case or suggests that the prosecutor
had conducted himself as if he were counsel for child witnesses
and the police, and had forgotten that the object of a prosecution
is not simply to win.
It's one thing for Quennell,
as attorney general, and Justice Department officials to seek
to appeal Baynton's judgment because they believe he unfairly
has lowered the bar for actions that constitute malicious prosecution.
It's another for the justice minister to declare without hesitation
that he supports Miazga's actions after studying this case for
nine days and to assert confidently that it wasn't a malicious
prosecution and that it wasn't conducted in a negligent manner.
Should the Court of Appeal
refuse to consider the appeal or rule against the Crown, or should
the case be lost on appeal to the Supreme Court, Quennell will
be in a precarious position.
From the perspective of Saskatchewan
residents and taxpayers, Quennell's decision to appeal the ruling
and put on hold compensation for innocent people who've been
made to suffer for 13 years inspires no confidence whatever in
Saskatchewan's justice system.
With each passing day, the
price tag grows, not only to keep the lawyers busy but to make
restitution for damages. Going by the $1.3-million out-of-court
settlement reached with John Popowich, a Saskatoon cop made to
suffer under a similarly overzealous and bogus prosecution in
the Martensville case, there's little doubt that taxpayers will
be reaching even deeper into their pockets before this mess is
settled.
What the government really
needs to do is to conduct a thorough review of its Justice Department
to see what has led to such embarrassing and credibility-eroding
prosecutions as Martensville, Latimer, Milgaard and Nerland and
take steps to fix them.
Instead, what a government
that's spending millions to improve the province's image across
Canada delivers is the spectacle of a "justice" minister
telling a dozen people whose lives his officials have ruined
that he has no plans even to apologize to them, let alone atone
for the misery they've been put through.
How much the government is
in touch with public sentiment on this issue was demonstrated
by its initial decision to have Quennell, a Saskatoon MLA dealing
with an issue with a huge impact on this city, announce the province's
response in a press conference at the lobby of the CIC building
in Regina, where Saskatoon media wouldn't have access to the
minister.
Skeptics would even question
the timing of the announcement, which coincided with the release
of the Boughen report on education funding and which would preoccupy
Regina media less familiar with the Klassen judgment.
However, by dragging out this
case, the government only focuses more public attention on a
troubled justice system that needs to be fixed -- and fast.
© Copyright 2004 The
StarPhoenix (Saskatoon)
Justice minister must
not dither
The StarPhoenix ,
January 07, 2004
Rather than allow his department
to continue its tiresome tradition of foot-dragging, it's time
that Justice Minister Frank Quennell announces how he'll handle
the troubling issues Justice George Baynton raises in a scathing
judgment in the Klassen civil case.
Quennell has yet to respond,
a week after Baynton ruled that Crown prosecutor Matt Miazga,
along with Saskatoon police officer Brian Dueck and child therapist
Carol Bunko-Ruys, paid by the Justice department, acted maliciously
and unprofessionally in pursuing charges against 12 innocent
people.
Apparently, the minister is
waiting for Justice officials to conduct a thorough analysis
to see if they should appeal Baynton's "big judgment"
before he publicly comments. It can only be hoped that Quennell,
barely a few weeks into his first cabinet posting at what's undoubtedly
the public agency with the worst reputation, will act decisively
and not follow the timid path of his predecessors.
The concerns Baynton raises
in his no-hold-barred decision about Miazga's conduct are such
that the minister needs to put the public interest in maintaining
a credible justice system far ahead of departmental posterior
covering.
It's one thing for the Crown
prosecutors' association to stand by Miazga come hell or high
water -- it's what unions do, to wit CUPE 51 in Moncton grieving
the case of a city worker and union member fired for showing
up at work drunk, carrying a loaded gun and looking for his boss.
But when a Crown prosecutor
is judged to have "totally abrogated his duty ... to make
an objective and competent assessment of the case," the
minister must act quickly to restore the image of a department
that's been tarnished for too long. If the Crown Attorneys Association
is concerned about its lawyers being found liable for malicious
prosecution in the conduct of their jobs, as spokesman Jeff Kalamakoff
suggests, it should read why Baynton held co-counsel Sonja Hansen
not liable while ruling against Miazga.
"The inescapable inference
to be drawn from Miazga's approach, attitude and conduct throughout
the criminal proceedings is that he was going to get committals
or convictions no matter how unreliable his witnesses were, and
that he was not going to let the truth get in the way,"
Baynton noted.
From Miazga telling Dueck to
proceed with charges without satisfying himself about reasonable
and probable cause to his ignoring his duties as an officer of
the court who represents the Crown and not "legal counsel
for a parent, a child complainant, a foster parent and Social
Services," there's plenty in Baynton's judgment to give
Quennell cause to act.
Not only does he suggest that
Miazga ignored the need for prosecutors to be "principled,
fair, open-minded and cognizant of the risk of ruining the lives
of innocent people by taking unworthy cases to court," Baynton
notes that the prosecutor also may have been acting to keep his
superiors in Regina happy by zealously prosecuting the case against
the 12 plaintiffs.
Essentially, this case seems
little different from a previous malicious prosecution suit involving
the Justice Department's handling of the Martensville fiasco.
After Saskatoon police officer John Popowich settled out of court
for $1.3 million, then justice minister Chris Axworthy refused
to hold any Justice officials responsible for their callous disregard
for the consequences of ruining innocent peoples' lives with
baseless prosecutions or to investigate the department's conduct.
Quennell shouldn't repeat that
grave mistake.
From David Milgaard's wrongful
conviction for murder to the Martensville mess to prosecutor
Randy Kirkham's jury tampering in the Latimer case to officials
cutting a deal with white supremacist Carny Nerland over the
death of Native trapper Leo LaChance, all indications are that
the operations of Saskatchewan's Justice Department need a thorough
airing.
Appealing Baynton's ruling
may buy Quennell and the government some time, but it certainly
wouldn't buy the Justice Department the public confidence or
credibility it so badly needs.
© Copyright 2004 The
StarPhoenix (Saskatoon)
Investigation must include
top officers' role
The StarPhoenix ,
January 08, 2004
The sympathy and apology Saskatoon
police chief Russ Sabo extended to a dozen people wrongly accused
of horrendous child abuse is a "good start to the healing
process," as Richard Klassen, who fought for a decade to
clear his name, said Wednesday.
Also welcome is Sabo's decision
to call in a legal firm to determine if his department's handling
of the bizarre case and the conduct of chief investigating officer
Brian Dueck had violated regulations in the provincial Police
Act.
Dueck, one of three persons
who a judge in a $10-million civil trial determined had acted
maliciously in pursuing an overzealous prosecution of the accused,
is on medical leave and not serving as a police officer at least
for the duration of the internal investigation. Queen's Bench
Justice George Baynton's searing judgment against Dueck (along
with Crown prosecutor Matt Miazga and child therapist Carol Bunko-Ruys),
taken in the context of Police Act regulations, suggest that
the lawyers Sabo retained will have their hands full.
For instance, the Discipline
Code of the act deems it a major offence for a police officer
willfully to make "a false, misleading or inaccurate oral
or written statement or entry in any official document or record,"
or to "act in a manner that is unbecoming or dishonourable
to the member or to the police service."
The act also says it's a major
offence for a police officer to abuse his authority by making
an arrest "without good and sufficient cause" or to
use "any unnecessary violence to any prisoner or other person"
he contacts in the course of his duties.
From Baynton's finding that
Dueck proceeded to lay charges against persons without an honest
belief in their probable guilt, to what the judge called "reprehensible
and uncalled for" treatment of a couple of accused women,
to his abusive and brutal questioning of others which put one
woman in a psychiatric ward, there's plenty for the lawyers to
consider.
However, the probe of the police
department's handling of the Klassen-Kvello prosecution will
be a mere whitewash unless it delves into how Dueck, then a corporal,
could have conducted such a seemingly single-handed crusade against
those he perceived to be monstrous child abusers without any
superiors questioning or curbing his zealotry.
Were senior officers even aware
that Dueck's entire investigation into such a high-profile case
consisted mainly of incredible testimony extracted with "shamelessly
leading questions" put to a handful of children? As the
judge noted, Dueck "carried out virtually no other investigation
respecting the allegations of the children and relied almost
exclusively upon those allegations to found the charges brought
against the plaintiffs."
Baynton concluded that "Dueck
consistently conducted himself as if he had tainted tunnel vision,"
that "his mind was completely closed to any indication that
the plaintiffs might be innocent," and that the officer
had gone so far as to berate a fellow cop who'd rejected a child's
allegations as unbelievable after conducting an interview untainted
by leading questions.
Yet, in what's long been a
top-heavy police service, a corporal whom Baynton describes as
"blinded by his zeal to turn the wild allegations of ...
children into a high-profile case that would portray him as a
diligent and unrelenting protector of abused children" apparently
was allowed to carry on unchecked on a course of action that
has shaken public confidence in the department.
In calling for an independent
legal review of Dueck's highly questionable actions in this case,
Sabo probably is doing what he can to buttress what morale is
left in his troubled department. However, the public needs to
be told what measures the department has enacted or will enact
in short order to put in place a chain of command that functions
to ensure that another Klassen-Kvello fiasco cannot be repeated.
Meanwhile, it's been 10 days
since Baynton's decision was released, and so far only Sabo has
had the gumption to act on his responsibilities. The sooner the
Calvert government acts, the sooner credibility will be restored
to its sickly Justice Department.
---
Steven Gibb, Gerry Klein, Les
MacPherson, Sarath Peiris and Lawrence Thoner collaborate in
writing SP editorials
---
"Democracy cannot be maintained
without its foundation: free public opinion and free discussion
throughout the nation of all matters affecting the state within
the limits set by the criminal code and the common law."
-The Supreme Court of Canada,
1938 © Copyright 2004 The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) Across the country reports | Most recent media reports | Chief Sabo apologizes
|
Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
