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Sermonette, February 2003

From boxes of documents, a picture emerges

Connecting the dots

Injusticebusters dot com went online in June, 1998 with the goal of publicizing a single story: The Foster Parent wrongful prosecution case which was eventually picked up by The Fifth Estate and has come to be known as "The Scandal of the Century."

During the two years we plugged away at keeping alive that single story , the main features of which were under a court-ordered publication ban, we found other stories of police and prosecutorial wrongdoing to publish or link to. Stephen Truscott | David Milgaard | Guy Paul Morin | Donald Marshall | Thomas Sophonow | Chris McCullough | from Canada and many U.S. cases.

A pattern began to emerge. There were pockets of dirty cops and prosecutors all over the country. They relied on keeping disclosure out of the hands of the accused and often secured judicial seals to ensure their convictions. Judges were particularly keen to issue bans over cases involving woman and children. The Young Offenders Act, and, then, rape shield legislation were helpful to them in covering their illegal tracks. Injusticebusters set about to find other cases which fit this pattern. We publicized the Stinchcombe decision which directs prosecutors to provide all relevant evidence to the accused. We encouraged others to come forward. Many did. Most were afraid to go public because of advice from their defence or civil lawyers.

Injusticebusters broke the ban and provided The Fifth Estate with videotapes which showed a cop and a social worker manipulating children to tell lies. The Fifth Estate was threatened with legal action but went ahead and broadcast the show. No charges were laid.

Another pattern showed up. Defence lawyers were cooperating with prosecutors and government lawyers to keep the lid on disclosure. Whether the disclosure involved criminal charges or discovery in civil claims, hardly anyone in the legal community was eager to buck the system. Across the country individuals were representing themselves, often after having given thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars to lawyers who did not help them. Collaboration of defence and prosecution lawyers was directed towards concealing evidence from judges. Prosecutors sought to conceal exculpatory evidence; defence lawyers often did not believe in their clients' innocence and feared "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" would work against them.

I know that when I hired Ed Holgate to defend my pot cultivation charges, he told me not to tell him certain things because I "wouldn't want to burn my lawyer." I had no intention of involving him in any lie; I wanted to get the charges in proportion to the "crime." My next lawyer, Don MacKinnon almost arranged a plea bargain with the Crown who reneged on the deal and then laid new charges. I had been present for the plea bargain but MacKinnon would not come to court with me to testify against the Crown. You have to understand Sheila, that the Crown is not bound by anything until it has gone before a judge, he told me.

I still don't understand. How could anybody understand? Do we not hire lawyers to protect us from this kind of mischief?

(It turned out that the Crown in this case had been decieved by RCMP corporal Wendell Sawinsky who wanted to make me an example in an early attempt at seizure of all my assets. Seizure of assets of people through "proceeds of crime" prosecutions have now become routine. Cops have recently been prosecuting many people for phony internet porn possession and seizing their computers for police use. Defence lawyers have not been helpful here, either. A further note on this is that although the judge had no choice but to give me some prison time, I received the minimum sentence possible. The police tampered with the central registry to make it impossible for me to get to a halfway house. When that was cleared up the Saskatoon Police delayed clearing the way for me to return to Saskatoon. Part of the condition was to place me under a gag order and an undertaking to not take part or be near any demonstrations of any kind.)

The passive attitude of defence lawyers has put a lot of innocent people in prison. The police and crown in Melville put a false case before Judge Larry Kyle and hit the jackpot with a conviction and 16 year sentence for Leon Walchuk. His defence lawyer should have screamed to the media as Robert Borden did in the Foster Parent case. Less dramatic but equally serious by sheer force of numbers are the hundreds of young, unemployed people imprisoned first for minor infractions and then thoroughly criminalized as they miss court dates or get involved in pathetic schemes with cronies they met in the system. Legal Aid lawyers just help the Crown push them through the proverbial revolving door.

The arrogance of the legal community has been challenged by a few brave judges. Peter Cory made excellent recommendations in his inquiry into the Sophonow case. Judge Klebuc did not look kindly on police who did shoddy investigations. Often by the time a judge gets the picture a person is being unfairly treated, it is too late. There are absolutely no decent services for addicts and otherwise troubled youth although there is a large and cynical bureaucracy of "workers" who get their paychecks by referring these people from one useless agency to another. The methadone program, for instance, provides no meaningful counselling for their clients who are prescribed a powerful, addictive drug which can only work in the context of a support network. Very often a judge will order treatment. Rarely will a judge find out his orders carry no weight. One cannot blame the judges believing there are actually programs that help people. There used to be a few. The drug counselling programs which are run by corrections are absolutely useless.

Last year the Supreme Court ruled police could not hide their criminal misdeeds under publication bans. CBC's Disclosure then broadcast the George Mentuk and Olivia Edgars tapes (14 minutes) which showed police in Manitoba and British Columbia fabricating evidence. This year Disclosure has exposed the Reid method of interrogation and its willful misuse by shady cops.

Often our local police and prosecutorial misdeeds are not picked up by the national media. Only when they get to a higher court do we hear about stories from other jurisdictions. As long as we hear about only a few cases we can be comforted that misdeeds are not widespread. When we hear about the similarities of misdeeds all over the country, indeed the continent, we are not so comfortable. We start to connect the dots. Patterns emerge. Conclusions are inescapable. Injusticebusters is posting and connecting these dots and keeping the stories and connections up there for all to see. Similarities between police wrongdoing in Saskatoon, Edmonton and Winnipeg are apparent. We can see how crown prosecutors have different standards in different jurisdictions. We can trace the patterns of unfairness and injustice. We can also point to those cops and crowns who do their jobs properly.

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Saturday was International Woman's Day. I didn't celebrate. I was busy posting information about one woman, Monique Turenne who has been mischievously charged with murder based partly on the shenanigans of two other women, her former sisters-in-law. I also posted some information about a woman in Edmonton who seems to be hiding behind court seals to put her ex away. And the horrible story of Mark Cook in Texas. I went back and read a page I had written three years ago on what I perceived to be a victim machine created by women who wanted lots of rights but no responsibilities. I reflected on Christine Bartlett-Hughes and her dishonesty in the prosecution of Don Smith and his family. I wondered if Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon were marking the day. It felt like grief.

In Saturday's news two judges, a man and a woman from different U.S. states dismissed the evidence in the Candyman entrapments.

The Klassen/Kvello and Martensville lawsuits have strong representation of both genders on both plaintiff and defendant sides. Justice has no gender. We hope it has some intelligence. There have been some faint flickerings of brain activity. May the force be with us.

Richard Klassen was told when he first protested the treatment of his family when the charges were stayed that the case was "political." The decade which has followed has shown that to be true. How deep do dirty politics in Saskatchewan go? We'll just have to keep connecting the dots until we find out. Political as the case may be there has not been a single politician willing to take it on.

--Sheila Steele, March 10, 2003

Saskatoon's 9/11

It is almost a year since that beautiful September morning when I was preparing to go to court to bear witness to the trial of the Saskatoon police constables who had taken Darrell Night to the edge of town in -25 degree weather and left him there. Night survived but two others, who had recieved similar "moonlight rides," Rodney Naistus and Lawrence Wegner. did not.

The contrast between the splendid September weather and the frigid January night we would be called upon to remember was striking. I was getting my notebooks together and absently watching Canada a.m. on TV when it happened -- the image of the first plane hitting the first tower and twenty minutes later, the second.

I felt the same frightened chill I had experienced 38 years earlier when, while shoppng in Dayton's department store in Minneapolis, the news was broadcast over the intercom that JFK had been shot. If I didn't respond with appropriate hysterical sorrow, I might be centred out as sympathizing with the assassin. I didn't and in some ways, I was. As a member of Fair Play for Cuba, I was called upon to help hide protect the local president of our organization who would have been surely attacked amidst the early rabble-rousing speculation about who had been responsible for firing those shots in Dallas (yes, I still think it was shots -- not a single bullet).

Court of Queen's Bench judge Eugene Scheibel asked both Crown and Defence if they wished to proceed with the Hatchen-Munson trial on Sep. 11, and, to everybody's credit, they did. The report of the trial is below. -- Sheila Steele, September 5, 2002

Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd.
William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell

Truth suppress'd, whether by courts or crooks, will find an avenue to be told. Sheila Steele, injusticebusters.com

If you hold the mouth of Truth, It will burst out its rib-cage. Somali proverb

Truth crushed to earth will rise again. --William Cullen Bryant

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Who we are:

Publisher Sheila Steele

Co-founder: Richard Klassen

New: injusticebustersblog. Participate!

Our activism contributed greatly to the good vibes which happened around the civil trial.

Index to the stories on this website

This is not regularly updated so if you are looking for a particular story and you have a name or keyword, please use the site search engine(at the bottom of the page) which IS regularly updated

Index to Saskatoon Police stories

This is a pretty good scrapbook for the 1998-2002 period.

More Sermonettes

 

early commentaries mixed in with news reports

2001

January: Legal Treachery to keep Dueck's lies safe

September: Hatchen and Munson trial

2002

March, 2002 -- Gay Bashing still a legal sport in Saskatoon -- Even when it turns to murder

First conscious sermonettes

2003

 

Feb. 1: Where we stand

Feb. 15, 2003: Has Saskatchewan learned anything?

March 1: Connecting the dots

March 23, 2003: From Micro to Macro

March 25, 2003: About libel and malice

March 27 : Gangs of Saskatoon: the police and prison guards

April 28, 2003: The Naked Truth

May 5: How low will they go?

May 15, 2003: Come clean Calvert, Cline!

May 30: Still smearing Milgaard - defamation is alive and well on the lawn of the Regina legislature and Precendent has been set as we reclaim our institutions

June 11, 2003: --Eric Cline carries on a corrupt tradition

Nov 7: Courage -- the only reward is justice

November 20: Just following orders

November 24: Mayor Atchison, community policing and graffiti

November 25: Michael Jackson

November 30: Corrupt officials must be severely punished: otherwise they just keep on putting the administration of justice in disrepute!

December 1: Christmas comes early for injustice warriors

December 4: Wide open Saskatchewan?

December 16: Crawling through the tunnel of justice since 1991

December 24: The Crown keeps right on breaking the law

December 30: Who will find justice under their tree?

 

2004

 

January 1. 2004: Unprecedented publicity and Happy New Year

January 8, 2004: Malice still afoot

January 10, 2004: Shame and mugshots

January 14, 2004: Telling more truth about the undefamable: McKillop and Quennell, the static duo

January 17, 2004: Fifth Estate returns and A working class hero is something to be

January 22,23, 2004: Justice is still prevailing -- it is just taking longer and Bits and pieces are now coming together to tell the story of the century

January 27, 2004: Telling the truth about the undefamable, restoring reputations to the defamed.

February 5, 2004: Negotiations and strategies: getting an intransigent government to remedy its damage

February 10, 2004: How many lawyers does it take to ruin a province? and Lawyer continues to treat people's lives as a cruel game: monopoly?

Febrary 16, 2004: Calvert is not King Arthur

March 29, 2004: Counting down to the damages trial

April 16, 2004: The internet, the courts and now the movies -- We will so what it takes to get justice

May 1, 2004: If Frank Quennell is any example of what former Justice Minister Chris Axworthy called "evolving," Saskatchewan is ready to kiss justice good-bye!

May 27, 2004: Some observations on Saskatchewan and justice

June 7, 2004:Media coverage of Monique Turenne's story illustrates journalistic laziness

June 8:, 2004 -- The police not only failed to serve and protect Don and Lorna Smith and their children but set them up for false charges and community shunning

September 2, 2004: A tale of three cops: Dueck, Gobeil and Schinkel -- with an update on how they get away with criminal obstruction of justice

November, 2004: Wilfred Hathway, Atif Rafay and Sebastian Burns -- RCMP stings offensive to community standards

November 11, 2004: Rogue Platoon? Identifying the rotten apples in Saskatoon Police Service and why we need a full public inquiry into our whole justice system

November 28, 2004: Can Justice Minister Quennell take a few more steps? The Prosecutors' office is still harbouring crowns who put the administrative of justice in disrepute

November 12, 2004: Saskatchewan Justice in chaos: The Stonechild report suggests it is.

November 28, 2004: The price for being a good judge or a good prosecutor

December 30: When the government interferes with the judiciary, we know a Police State is a dangerous possibility (The government appeal of the Klassen/Kvello decision)

 

2005

 

Jan 1, 2005: Chewed up digested and spit out

Jan. 5, 2005: More on chief Sabo

February 18, 2005: Tunnel vision: Darren Koehn, Wilf Hathway and Leon Walchuk

March 2: Fixing the system: Time to quit talking and implement previous commission recommendations

March 19, 2005 : Injustice as ShowBiz

April 6:, 2005: David Ahenakew : Hate and Justice in Saskatchewan

April 1, 2005: Accountability: The crown and social workers need malice