Judge's actions left door open for appeal. Pickton Appeal

Lots of people make mistakes at work, but judges are rarely subjected to disciplinary measures no matter what the cost of their errors


By Daphne Bramham, Vancouver Sun
June 29, 2009

We all make mistakes; we're only human. But we expect more of some people in our society -- judges, for one.

The bar must be set higher for them since the consequences of their decisions have more serious effects on people's lives and the public purse than most others.

And what we especially don't expect is that they will make such glaring errors that a serial killer's conviction could be overturned or that their decision is so off-base that both the Crown and defence appeal.

But that's what B.C. Supreme Court Justice James Williams did. Because of his errors, Robert "Willie" Pickton will get a hearing in the Supreme Court of Canada and a chance for a retrial.

This is a sorry chapter in Canada's biggest mass murder trial -- a grisly, sordid case.

One of three Court of Appeal justices who reviewed the case said Williams' mistake in his charge to the jury was inexcusable. Judge Ian Donald said Williams failed to properly instruct jurors on the law of aiding and abetting a crime and how it might apply in this case.

"This was an error of law," Donald wrote in his dissenting opinion. "The failure to instruct created a miscarriage of justice."

That's not the only mistake Williams made. All three appellate court judges said Williams was wrong to sever six of the 26 cases for trial.

That decision's legacy is that 20 families of murdered women may never get the justice they seek unless the Supreme Court orders a retrial.

Throughout the trial, the judge reportedly did a number of unusual things. After week 23, a story in The Globe and Mail noted Williams' "unusual state-of-the-nation address" to the jury when -- among other things -- he gave them a two-week vacation during the 11 months of hearings.

Another unprecedented decision was to have his law clerk, robed and sitting close by him in court. It apparently didn't help any.

Although this was one of the biggest trials in Canadian history, Williams was a relative rookie with only three years experience on the bench.

He took over the Pickton case a few days into the pre-trial hearings after the other judge suddenly found he had a scheduling conflict.

However, he'd had big-trial experience from the other side. He was a prosecutor in the case of Reena Virk, a Victoria teen who was beaten and killed by two other teens. He was defence lawyer for hockey star Marty McSorley, who was charged with the on-ice assault on former Canucks player Donald Brashear.

Judges are not oracles, as Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin of the Supreme Court of Canada has said. Instead, they are men and women with legal training, appointed and well-paid to sit in judgment until they are 75 years old.

But unlike most people who mess up at work, they are rarely subject to disciplinary measures.

"In fairness, the conduct of a judge should not be measured in the context of a complaint arising out of a single proceeding, but rather against a wider test of performance."

That's what former B.C. Court of Appeal chief justice Allan McEachern said in a speech given while he was chairman of the Canadian Judicial Council.

He noted the difficulties of disciplining judges. Appointed either by the provincial or federal government, they can only be removed by the government.

Still McEachern argued against anything short of removal or anything more severe than review by judicial councils, which are limited (in his words) to expressing disapproval in words that range from "unfortunate," "unwise," "inappropriate," or "in some very few cases, something stronger."

Anything in between -- suspensions or sanctions -- would undermine the authority of the court and judge's independence, he said.

But from the beginning, almost everything about the Pickton case has undermined people's faith in the judicial system.

The victims were women who had no faith in the protection of police or courts. Survival sex workers and drug addicts rarely get a fair hearing from them.

The families can't help but distrust a system so callous that it took years before anyone would even take their reports of missing mothers, daughters and sisters.

That fact that Williams chose to hear only six of 26 cases only further damaged what little trust some had that justice might ever be done.

I'm sure Justice Williams is sorry for his mistake. And maybe I can even accept that public humiliation is as good a punishment as any.

But it's absurd to think that disciplining him-- even removing him from the bench -- would make things worse.

dbramham@vancouversun.com

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Letter to a monster. Hello Willie.

Ethan Baron, The Province Published: Friday, June 26, 2009

Hello, Willie.

I know you're reading this, because it's all about you.

Just like the trial.

After four years of working on your story, after sitting in that courtroom for months on end, watching you through bullet-proof glass, I know you far better than I'd like to.

For these four years, you have been an unwelcome guest in my world.

You have strewn my dreams with carnage, gruesome castoffs from your world of suffering, dismemberment and death.

I dream of killing. I dream of watching people die.

Once, I even dreamed of you.

We were in a room together. I don't know why. And, in my nightmare, I was overcome by fear, not that you'd suddenly attack me - I'm bigger and smarter than you - but that I would fall asleep, and would wake to feel your strange, monkey fingers around my neck.

I felt, for the first time, what every female who is familiar with your case felt from the very outset: the fear every woman lives with everyday, of crossing paths with someone like you.

A remorseless killer.

I do not hold you responsible. You are a biological aberration, an obscenity of nature.

Remember the story you told that undercover cop in jail, that you killed 49 people? I do.

Sometimes, sitting through those endless hours of testimony about which DNA swab was used on which wall in your slaughterhouse, and which sock was found in which bag in your filthy trailer, I used to think about killing you.

It wasn't that I actually wanted to, or even thought you deserved it. I would sit and examine the courtroom security procedures in place for your protection, and my mind would wander. I figured that, if I sat in the gallery seat closest to the doorway for the courtroom, I could rush through the door when a witness went in, before one of the burly, ever-vigilant sheriffs could grab me.

I would have been in front of you in a flash, my hands around your throat, squeezing. The sheriffs in the courtroom didn't carry guns, but I concluded that those who did, in the gallery, would be through the door as I began to throttle you. Friendly as they were, they were serious about their job, and I have no doubt they would have shot me before your life expired.

It was fun to think about, though.

I remember thinking once, after some particularly gruesome evidence came before the court, that it was interesting that this stuff didn't seem to disturb my mind. Then I got up at a break, and realized I felt nauseous almost to the point of vomiting.

I never cried, except for once, on the day you were sentenced, when the Crown read a statement from Brenda Wolfe's mother. She'd written that if all the tears she'd shed made a path to heaven, she would walk along it and bring her daughter home.

You might not remember that part.

I have to admit there was a lot of laughter, too. We all got a kick out of your attachment to your late horse, Goldie, especially when we found out that, when you'd taken her head to the taxidermist, you rode the bus.

I hope you're not upset they wouldn't let you have Goldie's head in your jail cell. Institutional authorities can be so cruel.

I'm not supposed to talk about the plasticine figurines some of us made during the trial, but I can tell you I have my version of your pig-butchering buddy Pat Casanova sitting on my desk. You'd get a chuckle out of how his thumb is covering up that cancer-surgery hole in his throat. I can send it to you if you want. I'm not that attached to it.

You're more clever than you look, I'll give you that. You knew enough to prey on people who wouldn't be immediately missed, women of such low social status that the police wouldn't pay attention when they started to vanish. And you even let some go free, so they could tell people Willie Pickton wasn't the reason so many women were going away and never coming back.

You got sloppy at the end, you admitted that. When the police came to your farm, they found a little snapshot of your process.

Heads, hands and feet in buckets. A jawbone in the pig manure. You had it all down to a routine, didn't you?

And what you didn't dispose of at the farm went to the rendering plant. That driver from the plant testified that he'd pick up barrels of burnt-black chunks of meat from your farm.

Did you just pour gas into barrels of human remains and set them on fire, so the pieces of people wouldn't look like pieces of people?

You will be remembered as an awful human being, worse than worthless.

Still, you have one shot at redemption, Willie, one chance to be seen in a different light.

You can come clean.

Forget about any appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

You need to tell the world what you did, and why.

You can go down in history as a nasty bit of human trash.

Or you can have the last word, and be forever remembered as a terrible monster who, in the end, did the right thing. It would be - almost - heroic.

Do you have the courage, Willie? Do you have the strength?

Maybe.

Do you have the humanity?

I don't think so.

ebaron@theprovince.com

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1735663

B.C. Appeal Court denies appeal for convicted serial killer Robert Pickton

Sunny Dhillon, THE CANADIAN PRESS
June 25, 2009, EDT

VANCOUVER, B.C. - Convicted serial killer Robert Pickton's appeal on six counts of second-degree murder has been dismissed by B.C.'s high court, but a potential second trial hangs in the balance as the former pig farmer's legal odyssey trudges on.

In a two-to-one decision, the B.C. Court of Appeal Thursday rejected claims from Pickton's defence that the trial judge made numerous significant errors while instructing the jury.

"The judge acted correctly in providing the jury with instruction that embraced the law . . . , " Justice Richard Low wrote in a decision that sets the stage for Pickton's case to potentially be heard in the Supreme Court of Canada.

"In my opinion, there was no procedural error," Low said.

In a second ruling, this one on a Crown appeal, the judges unanimously agreed that if Pickton is successful in a Supreme Court referral, then the Crown could proceed with either a trial on six counts of first-degree murder, or the 26 counts Pickton originally faced.

The court also placed a conditional stay on any new trial if and when Pickton's defence team decides to take the case to the high court, saying there was no need for the "enormous demands" of another trial if Pickton's conviction isn't overturned.

The ruling essentially preserves the Crown's right to proceed to trial on a charges of first-degree murder on either six or 26 charges.

Pickton was arrested in February 2002, setting off a massive search of his property in Port Coquitlam, B.C., where investigators found body parts, blood samples, fragments of bone and the belongings of victims.

He was originally to face 26 charges but six months before the trial began, the judge divided the case in two, proceeding with just six first-degree murder charges in January 2007 after deeming the case to be too large for a jury to digest.

The court decisions disappointed Susie Kinshella, whose sister Wendy Crawford is among the outstanding 20 murder charges.

"It's just unbelievable when you sit in that courtroom and you hear the evidence that's gone on and that plays in your mind," she said, adding that all she wants is justice for her sister and recognition of her death.

Before Thursday's decision several family members had said they actually wanted Pickton to win his appeal, so a new trial could be heard into all 26 deaths.

The B.C. Crown had said it wouldn't proceed with the remaining 20 murder charges if Pickton lost his appeal, because he was already serving a life sentence

Lynn Frey, whose stepdaughter Marnie Frey is among the six women Pickton is convicted of killing, said she was also hoping for a new trial of first-degree murder on all 26 counts.

Frey, who has been fighting to reclaim her stepdaughter's remains from the massive collection of evidence in the Pickton case, said she's no closer to that goal after the decisions.

"When somebody you love passes away you get to go to their gravesite, you get to grieve the day that they passed away," she said.

"You do the proper steps as you grieve. This way, there are no proper steps. We're grieving every day."

All 26 of the missing women on the Pickton indictment were young and had vanished between 1995 and 2001 from the Downtown Eastside.

Most were sex-trade workers, addicted to illegal drugs and a disproportionate number of the victims were aboriginal.

One element of the Crown's appeal was that the trial judge erred by severing the 26 counts into two separate trials. The Crown said the move hindered their ability to use similar-fact evidence - similarities between the different murders - to show Pickton had a scheme to kill prostitutes from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside

The appeal court agreed, ruling that the trial judge committed extricable legal error in ordering that 20 counts of first-degree murder be removed from the indictment.

The judges left the door open for the Crown to drop a second trial, if Pickton loses at the high court.

"I am persuaded that the Crown's position on this issue is sound," wrote Chief Justice Lance Finch.

"If Mr. Pickton remains convicted of second-degree murder on those six counts after all appeals are concluded, there would be no useful purpose in a retrial on those same offences as charges of first-degree murder," Finch said.

B.C. Crown spokesman Neil MacKenzie if Pickton chooses not to go to the high court, or loses there, that will be the end of the legal proceedings.

"The Crown's position has been and remains that if Mr. Pickton exhausts all of his available appeals on the six convictions and remains subject to the sentence of life in prison with no parole eligibility, the Crown will not proceed on the remaining 20 counts," MacKenzie said.

"We understand that it's a decision that some family members are disappointed with. However, the Branch has to keep in mind that any additional convictions beyond the six that he's received will not result in any further penalty or punishment being imposed."

That possibility of a second trial still exists, with the split B.C. Appeal Court decision meaning Pickton's lawyers have the right to take the case to Canada's highest court.

Pickton's lawyer, Patrick McGowan, said no decision has yet been made on how to proceed.

"It's going to take some time for defence counsel to consult and review these materials and decide on the course of action that we're going to take," McGowan said just before leaving the courthouse to share the news with his client.

Pickton was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years in the killings of Frey, Mona Wilson, Sereena Abotsway, Andrea Joesbury, Georgina Papin and Brenda Wolfe.

Content Provided By Canadian Press.

© Corus® Entertainment Inc. 2009

'Insensitive' coroner's staff rub more salt into victims' wounds

Family told murdered woman's remains would be returned by post

By Suzanne Fournier, The Province
June 25, 2009 6:35 AM

Anxiously awaiting a court decision today on the fate of convicted serial killer Robert Pickton, Britney Frey is hoping she will finally be able to lay to rest the remains of her mother, Marnie Frey.

Britney, who is only 16 but has been designated Marnie's next-of-kin for legal purposes, says she is angry that "the coroner's office told me they would put my mother's remains in the mail — there's no way I'd let them do that."

Britney will be in court today to hear if Pickton's conviction for the second-degree murder of her mother and five other women will be upheld, or whether more legalities will delay the release of her mother's remains.

Britney and her late mother's stepmother, Lynn Frey, will be up at dawn today to catch a ferry from Nanaimo and then a bus to get to court in Vancouver. Both called the coroner's remarks "insensitive."

"I thought it was disgusting, and I told them not to do that, because I will come and get my mother," said Britney.

Lynn Frey, who attended many days of the lengthy legal proceedings against Pickton, said yesterday: "I got a call from Victims' Services and they said, 'Don't bother coming to court, it will only be a minute,' and they refused to give us any funding to attend court.

"I said, 'I want justice and don't tell me there's no point in me coming down.'

"This decision is important," she said, "because we want to bring Marnie home. We want Marnie's remains back.

"We have got a death certificate now, but when I talked to the coroner, I was told when it comes time to release the remains, 'We'll put it in the mailbox for you.' This is the kind of insensitivity we've had to deal with all along."

Marnie Frey gave birth to Britney in 1992, when she was 18. Marnie, who grew up in Campbell River, was introduced to hard drugs in her teens. She moved to Vancouver, but called home regularly, up to eight times a day.

On her 25th birthday, she called home, but was never heard from again and, in 1997, she was reported missing.

In November 2002, the Freys were told an RCMP forensics team had found Marnie's remains on the Pickton farm. At Pickton's lengthy trial, evidence showed only Marnie's jaw and three teeth had been recovered.

On Dec. 9, 2007, a jury found Pickton guilty of the second-degree murder of Marnie Frey and five other women: Andrea Joesbury, Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Brenda Wolfe and Georgina Papin.

The Freys will likely still have to wait for the end of legal proceedings against Pickton. Both prosecution and defence are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, leaving all the victims' families waiting to bury their loved ones.

B.C. Coroner's Service spokesman Jeff Dolan confirmed "we've had ongoing discussions with them [the Freys and other victims' families] and they've been told [victims'] remains will be released at the end of legal proceedings."

Dolan said the coroner makes decisions on each case in consultation with prosecutors.

Dolan could not confirm who spoke with the Freys.

He said human remains, "whether complete or a smaller portion, are released in a way to guarantee the dignity of the deceased." He said he had not heard of any coroner ever mailing human remains.

"In the history of the coroner's service, I can't say it's never happened, but we treat all remains with the same dignity."

E-mail: sfournier@theprovince.com

© Copyright (c) The Province

http://www.theprovince.com/Insensitive+coroner+staff+more+salt+into+victims+wounds/1729932/story.html

Mobile Access Project played a role in crimes

Vancouver Sun
June 20, 2009


Your lead editorial of June 17 was absolutely bang-on in terms of why the provincial government's decision to cut funding to the Mobile Access Project -- a van that offers street workers condoms, needles, protection, information and refreshments -- is utterly unconscionable.

Vulnerable women working in the sex trade continue to be targets for violence, and many of them don't trust the police to handle adequately any information or intelligence they provide.

The MAP van staff were the recipients of hundreds of tips and bad date reports, which found their way to police.

These often provided the missing pieces to investigative puzzles, helping to get violent, sadistic men off the low track.

If we've learned anything from the last decade of carnage on the Downtown Eastside, it's that drug-addicted sex trade workers will not go to police if they believe that will affect their access to drugs or their safety, but they will talk to outreach workers they come to know.

The incredibly short-sighted decision to cut this program will result in increased sexual assaults and other serious assaults on these women.

Once again, the cost of solving these crimes will far outweigh the minuscule investment in programs like the van.

Lori Shenher

Vancouver
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Lori Shenher is the former lead detective on the Vancouver Missing Women case.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Mobile+Access+Project+played+role+solving+crimes/1715616/story.html

On Lori Shenher

http://www.missingpeople.net/news_articles_with_former_lead_d.htm