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Related
pages: Outcome | Terry
Hinz | Ed Holgate
| Matthew Miazga | the Foster Parent case
| Axworthy conflict of interest
| Klassens await trial
| StarPhoenix editorial and previous SP report
| Government lawyer
Don McKillop, January 2002 | Popowich
| The $10M+ Lawsuit
| Klassens await day
in court | The Gerald Morris
case traces some of the branches of corruption in the Saskatchewan
legal community | Background
to the case | Saskatchewan
Court of Appeals role in covering malice | Witness
tampering in the Foster Parent case | What they are saying in the law journals:
Conflicts of interest
| The Seven Deadly Sins of prosecutors
| Lessons from the Proulx
case | Courageous prosecutor Terry
Hinz | Miazga | Hansen | Quinney
| Defence lawyers who perhaps love the Crown too much : Holgate
| Dufour | Axworthy
| the lawyers in the following waltzes of their clients to guilty
verdicts: | Howard Gowan
| Leon Walchuk | Don
Smith | Jay Watson |
- The Klassen
story
- Breaking
through to the public
Huge lawsuit to start
Sept. 8
Saskatchewan News
Network; Canwest News Service, Saturday, May 03, 2003
SASKATOON -- A multi-million
dollar lawsuit filed against prosecutors, therapists, and police
by several people wrongly accused of ritual child abuse will
go to trial Sept. 8.
The parties completed a pretrial
hearing this week, and have not reached a settlement.
The case, known in the early-1990s
as the Scandal of the Century, led to dozens of charges against
Richard Klassen and several others.
Three children fabricated wild
stories about Satanic rituals and sexual abuse they suffered
at the hands of Klassen and others.
The children have since recanted,
but the plaintiffs claim officials knew they were innocent from
the early stages of the case.
© Copyright 2003 The Leader-Post (Regina)
Privilege ruling blow
to justice
The StarPhoenix Editorial,
February 28, 2003
A court ruling that extends
the concept of solicitor-client privilege to communications between
a Crown prosecutor and a Saskatoon police officer serves only
to further public concerns about Saskatchewan's justice system.
Justice Mona Dovell of the
Court of Queen's Bench said that her decision, which prevents
plaintiffs in a $10-million civil suit for malicious prosecution
from questioning prosecutor Terry Hinz about a meeting with former
Saskatoon police sergeant Brian Dueck, applies only at the discovery
stage of this litigation.
"It may very well be that
during the trial, the trial judge, having heard all of the evidence,
may determine that a solicitor-client privilege does not exist
as between Dueck and Hinz in the spring of 1991 when the opinion
was given."
For the sake of maintaining
public confidence in the administration of justice it should
be hoped that a trial judge will, indeed, take a wider view of
the implications of allowing officials entrusted to act in society's
interest to close ranks when their actions cause harm to persons
they are supposed to protect.
At best, it's a long stretch
to suggest that an investigating police officer who approaches
a Crown prosecutor with charges he wants to lay against someone
is retaining the prosecutor as his solicitor.
According to Saskatchewan Justice
documents, "prosecutors are independent of both the police
and the courts ... Once the police have laid a charge, the prosecutor
is free to decide if he or she will prosecute it."
Even though Dovell found "absolutely
no case law on point that being whether or not there is solicitor-client
privilege as between a prosecutor and an investigating officer
in the context of a malicious prosecution civil action,"
it would appear the Alberta Justice department's assessment of
a prosecutor's role might prove a useful guideline for a future
decision:
"The prosecutor is not
the lawyer for the police or for the victims or complainants.
The prosecutor is the representative of the 'state' -- an organization
which includes the accused among its members."
Sources have told The SP that
Hinz was the first prosecutor to be shown the case file containing
incredible allegations against Richard and Kerrie Klassen and
several others of sexual abuse and Satanic rituals involving
children. Apparently, Dueck approached other prosecutors to take
the case to trial after Hinz suggested there wasn't enough evidence
to proceed.
Richard Klassen and 11 other
persons are seeking damages after the three children who made
the allegations admitted they concocted the bizarre stories.
Subsequent comments from the children and others suggest that
officials should have known that this was an implausible case
that never should have gone to trial.
A frustrated Klassen, who sought
to explore the communications between Hinz and Dueck to buttress
the plaintiffs' case, rightly wonders how victims of malicious
prosecutions could ever get pertinent evidence with cops and
prosecutors granted such wide latitude on privilege.
By "shopping around"
his case to other prosecutors after Hinz wouldn't proceed, it
seems Dueck wasn't seeking an independent legal opinion as much
as one that matched his own. At best, this qualifies as a police
officer trying to do his job, not a "client" looking
for a lawyer.
It's especially important to
keep in mind that, according to Saskatchewan Justice's own guidelines,
Hinz had a duty to "act in a way that strikes a fair balance
between the competing interests of convicting the guilty, protecting
the citizens' rights and freedoms and protecting the public from
criminals."
So, if he advises a police
officer that a case doesn't meet the standards required and the
officer proceeds anyway on a course that ends up hurting 12 people,
the injured persons should have the right to question Hinz about
what he might have told Dueck.
Hinz wasn't acting as Dueck's
lawyer. His duty was to represent the "state," which
includes the persons Dueck wanted to charge with flimsy evidence.
Not only will the legal manoeuvring at this stage over "privilege"
hamstring Dueck's credibility at trial, the justice system itself
is found wanting for condoning it.
© Copyright 2003 The
StarPhoenix (Saskatoon)
Officer fights release
of comments in abuse case
Jason Warick, The StarPhoenix;
Saskatchewan News Network, Thursday, February 20, 2003
A Saskatoon police officer
is trying to block the release of his conversation with a Crown
prosecutor about a Satanic abuse case in the early 1990s.
But if then-Cpl. Brian Dueck
is successful, it will set a dangerous precedent, warned one
of the 12 people suing him and others for malicious prosecution.
It would make it nearly impossible
for the victims of malicious prosecutions to find out what went
wrong in their cases, said Richard Klassen.
The matter will soon be decided
by Queen's Bench Justice Mona Dovell, who is presiding over the
preliminary stages of a $10-million lawsuit filed by a dozen
people wrongly accused of the ritual and sexual abuse of three
children.
Dueck's lawyer argued in court
Wednesday that any conversation between Dueck and Crown prosecutor
Terry Hinz is off-limits because of the lawyer-client confidentiality
or "privilege" rule.
"Dueck, as the police
officer, was clearly Hinz' client," David Gerrand said.
Both Dueck and Hinz have already
been questioned under oath in the case, but a court order prohibits
the publication of any details.
According to sources, after
Dueck conducted his investigation he took the file to Hinz, who
reviewed it and allegedly told Dueck there wasn't enough information
to lay charges.
Sources say Dueck then took
the file to other prosecutors and charges were laid.
Richard Klassen and the other
11 people suing would like Hinz to testify about his conversation
with Dueck because the police officer was talking to the prosecutor
as part of his job, Klassen argued.
"There is absolutely no
privilege. It doesn't exist," Klassen argued. "Terry
Hinz is a very important player. What Terry Hinz had to say is
relevant."
Klassen said every police officer
and prosecutor sued for malicious prosecution will try to use
the confidentiality argument if it's allowed in this case.
That will make it nearly impossible
for the wrongly accused to get information on their cases, he
said.
Dueck and other officials are
counter-suing Klassen and the others because of alleged defamation
in the 1990s.
|
Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
