|
Publication
bans gone nuts | Edmonton
no-name case | Supreme
Court allows Mentuk undercover framers one year to get themselves
a new strategy | The
Reid technique | The Rafay Burns
sting illustrates how deadly the cops can be | The
judgment in Mentuck detailing the RCMP sting operation |
Brian Hutchinson investigates RCMP
scenario methods | Court
ordered publication bans | RCMP
exporting illegal tactics to Australia | Scenario sting victims:
Clayton Mentuck | Atif
Rafay and Sebastian Burns | Kyle
Unger | Wilfred Hathway
| Christine LePage
| Gordon Strowbridge
| Jean Paul Aubee |Main Rafay Burns page
Publication
bans
Police who abuse their authority and
break the law must be vigorously scrutinized by the media; that is our only protection from
becoming a police state (Scroll
down for article from Christian Science Monitor)
The Big Boss sting has been
used by RCMP as one arrow in a quiver full of methods used to
catch the bad guys. Its effectiveness was demonstrated in the
Cape Breton case of Ernest Gordon Strowbridge which has now become
a staple on A&E's Cold Case files. In the Strowbridge case,
police already had DNA from a cigarette and knife and eye-witness
testimony. They felt this was not enough to order a Canada wide
warrant (Strowbridge had moved to Ontario) so they asked the
police in Ontario to sting him for a confession. They took three
months to set Strowbridge up -- finally arranging for him to
meet the Big Boss at one of the most expensive hotels in Toronto.
It would appear that Strowbridge was responsible for the Dupe
killing and he pled to manslaughter, receiving a 7 year sentence.
Versions of this sting operation
have been used against Clayton
Mentuk and Olivia Edgars, both of whom were acquitted after
the confesions extracted in this manner were thrown out as being
unreliable. In the case of Jean
Paul Aubee, a confession extracted in the same fashion has
stuck and Aubee is serving a 25 year sentence.
On October 22, 2004 Sebastian
Burns and Atif Rafay were convicted of killing Rafay's parents
and sister and sentenced to three life sentences to be served
consecutively. The RCMP sting operators, Al Haslett and Gary
Shinkaruk were there to see the conclusion to their project.
That project would seem to be the conviction and sentencing of
two innocent men who were teenagers at the time they were first
pursued by these officers.
The police had no difficulty
providing U.S. media with selected bits of the "confession."
Shown out of context and with a biased voice-over, this false
evidence was used to smear the accused.
There has been no presumption
of innocence in this case in the media on either side of the
border.
According to the Globe
and Mail, there is a publication ban on these guys' names.
If this was ordered by a Canadian court, we have to wonder when
and where it was made since Rafay and Burns were not ever charged
or tried in Canada. If this was ordered by the court in Seattle,
we have to ask whether this was the result of a personal initiative
by Haslett and Shinkaruk or if the RCMP brought its full strength
to bear behind the request for such an order. Rather than simply
accepting this ban, the Globe and Mail should be asking these
questions.
We reprint below an article
first published in the Christian Science Monitor three years
ago. There are people on both sides of the border who are concerned
about these trends. -- Sheila Steele, Fall, 2004
Courtroom secrecy is under fire in Canada
Tom Regan Staff writer of
The Christian Science Monitor, July 03, 2001
When Clayton
Mentuck confessed not once, but five times on videotape to a
1996 murder in Manitoba, Canada, it seemed certain he would spend
much of his life behind bars.
But then the unexpected happened.
The trial judge acquitted Mr. Mentuck, ruling that the police
obtained the confessions using "positively overwhelming"
inducements. But the public was never to hear the details of
this confession - or the police methods in extracting it - because
the judge had issued a ban on media coverage of most of the trial.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police had requested the ban, saying
it needed to protect the undercover methods its operatives used
to gain the confession.
Canada's longstanding practice
of protecting certain parties in court cases is coming under
fire from media - and even being rendered obsolete by advancing
technologies.
Canada's Supreme Court recently
heard arguments in the Mentuck case over whether the publication
bans go too far, as media representatives allege.
Nick Hirst, editor of the Winnipeg
Free Press - one of the papers leading the fight against the
publication ban - says the public is growing skeptical of official
secrecy. "What this case is really all about is a change
in previous presumptions about the courts and the police - the
idea that what the police and the courts do for you is always
good," he says. "This is a societal change in Canada."
If the Supreme Court sides
with the media, it could significantly alter the balance between
the right of police to protect their secrets and the public's
right to know about them.
Parallel cases
show paradox
While most Canadian trials
are open to the public, the proceedings of many trials may be
banned from publication. (In the US, all proceedings are open
to the media except testimony given in Grand Jury hearings. Publication
bans are issued rarely, such as when a judge enacts a ban to
protect an underage victim of sexual assault, or if national
secrets are endangered.) In some cases, the bans are part of
the statutes of the federal or provincial legal systems - for
instance, in the case of a young offender in Canada (under the
age of 16), the media may not identify the youth without permission
of the judge.
The publication ban in the
Mentuck case was not provided for by statute.
But even while the Canadian
Supreme Court is deliberating on the Mentuck case, a court case
in the US involving a Canadian police operation illustrates the
growing paradox of trying to keep court proceedings secret in
an age when technology allows media to publish across physical
borders instantly.
In Washington State, Atif Rafey
and Sebastien Burns will be tried for the murder of Rafey's family
seven years ago. The pair fled to Canada, where they were eventually
captured by Canadian police and later extradited to the US.
The Canadian police used much
the same methods to obtain confessions from Rafey and Burns as
they did from Mentuck. Now, the details of those methods will
be heard in a US courtroom, and will probably be covered by Canadian
media.
Even one of the lawyers who
argued in favor of the publication ban in the Mentuck case says
the Internet and satellite TV will make it increasingly difficult
to use publication bans to protect police techniques.
"The fact is that countries
like Canada and England may be moving much closer to a US-style
court-media relationship, whether they want to or not,"
says Heather Leonoff, a lawyer for the Manitoba Justice Department.
"It's just going to get a lot harder to keep [media bans]
in place."
Ms. Leonoff warns that publicizing
undercover methods could put police officers' lives at risk.
"The main issue to us is the safety of Canadian police officers.
If the details are known to the public, people may be aware that
they are part of a sting. And that could lead to a dangerous
situation."
Courtroom privacy
obsolete?
But Paul Schabas, the lawyer
representing the Canadian Newspaper Association before the Supreme
Court in the Mentuck appeal, disagrees.
"The tactics that are
being kept secret ... are well known in publicly available legal
documents, and on the Internet, in decisions that deal with these
sort of police activities. And then there is the Rafey-Burns
case in Washington State, and many other examples," he says.
"The question we really have to ask is, do these publication
bans serve any purpose at all?"
Leonoff, who says she is not
in favor of publication bans that merely shield judges and police
from legitimate public scrutiny, still thinks there is need for
them at times.
"You have to measure the
effectiveness of law enforcement versus the theoretical value
of publication bans - and the practical value of publication
bans," Leonoff says.
Mr. Schabas says the issue
has gone beyond that point, however.
"We already live in a
global village," he says. "Besides, it's never been
impossible for a person to have a fair trial in Canada because
of publicity, nor have police tactics been compromised by public
discussion of their effectiveness."
And if that makes Canada a
little more like the US, that's not necessarily a bad thing,
Schabas adds. "Canadians are rightly skeptical about the
US when it comes to many areas.... But not everything about the
US is bad. And lots of public debate about police tactics is
a good thing."
(c) Copyright 2001. The
Christian Science Monitor
Publication ban
crime against democracy
Les MacPherson, The
StarPhoenix, April 5, 2005
It is a sad state of affairs
when we have to learn from an anonymous American website about
massive and systematic political corruption in Canada.
Canadian news sources are prohibited
by an absurd publication ban from revealing the lurid details.
For fear of being prosecuted, I can't even identify the American
website that has defied the ban. I can say, however, that it
took me about 20 seconds to find it using the Google search engine.
Fortunately, the dark forces of suppression haven't yet figured
out a way of muzzling the World Wide Web. Of course, this makes
a richly deserved mockery of the dark forces of suppression.
What's being suppressed here
is evidence of political corruption variously described by those
who heard it as explosive, devastating, shocking and so on. They're
saying it could topple the Liberal government. If Canadians ever
got to hear about it, that is.
The allegations surfaced last
week in Montreal at the Gomery inquiry. Testifying was one Jean
Brault, a Quebec advertising executive implicated in the federal
sponsorship scandal. Brault is to go on trial next month for
fraud.
So as not to jeopardize the
fairness of that trial, Mr. Justice John Gomery ordered a temporary
ban on publication of Brault's testimony. Gomery, like most other
Canadian judges, seems to think that jurors are too stupid to
distinguish between sworn testimony heard in the courtroom and
what they might have read in a newspaper or seen on television.
It is not a view that generates any confidence in our justice
system. If juries really are that stupid, we might as well scrap
the whole idea of jury trials and leave distinctions of guilt
or innocence to our betters on the bench.
In this case, however, it appears
to be the judge who has no clue. Otherwise, he'd have anticipated
the futility of a publication ban on a matter of vital national
importance. Juicy details surfaced on the Internet almost immediately.
According to the ban-busting American website, there have since
been tens of thousands of hits by curious Canadians. Gomery might
as well have tried to ban sunshine.
It's not as if we haven't seen
this before. Details of the disgraceful plea bargain with Karla
Homolka were published on the web in spite of a publication ban.
Federal election results in Eastern Canada were published before
polls closed in the West in spite of a publication ban. Canadian
judges will have to get used to the idea that, in this wired
world, information is largely beyond their control.
A Canadian website operator
could still be jailed for breaching the ban. But no such pressure
can be brought to bear against website operators in another country.
Especially not in the U.S., where suppression of vital information
is considered undemocratic, un-American and just plain wrong.
Down there, it's the people who rule. Up here, the people are
treated more like children.
All our MPs know by now the
gist of Brault's damning testimony. All the political party operatives
know. All the high-ranking bureaucrats know. They all have their
sources in the Gomery inquiry. What they learned from those sources
will significantly influence how Canada is governed in the days
and weeks to come. Meanwhile, Canadians who pay for it all are
supposed to be kept in the dark. It's a crime against democracy.
It's also a national embarrassment.
Americans are laughing at us, and justifiably so. Where else
in the world but Canada would the public be effectively shut
out of a public inquiry?
At least we were given a clue
to what's happening by Doug Mitchell, lawyer for the federal
Liberal party. He's in the awkward position of denying allegations
that most Canadians have yet to hear.
In a prepared statement, Mitchell
pointed out that the Liberals are millions of dollars in debt.
"This is hardly in keeping
with assertions that the party was receiving substantial financial
benefit through inappropriate means," he said. Of course,
he did not take questions about these assertions for fear of
violating the publication ban. How convenient.
Even so, you know it can't
be good when the Liberals raise their whopping debt as evidence
of their innocence. We're broke, they seem to be saying, so we
couldn't be thieves. As if excessive spending is evidence of
honesty.
For the moment, at least, the
opposition seems content to let the rot go unexposed while the
scandalized Liberals hang on power.
"Canadians don't want
an election," said deputy Conservative leader Peter MacKay.
But maybe Canadians would want
an election, maybe Canadians would demand an election, if only
they were allowed to know what was going on.
les.macpherson@TheSP.com
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2005
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
