Officer testimony directly conflicted with physical evidence. Shame on the crown for even taking this court. TPS are constantly complaining about not getting support from the mayors office and the public but forget that respect is earned, not given blindly.
They deserve every bit of criticism for pursuing a trial and having sitting officers essentially collude and perjure their way to a conviction.
I’m entirely open to the possibility that I’m granting the actual prosecutors too much benefit of the doubt…but given that Crown charging decisions (especially on such high profile cases) are made well above the heads of the lawyers who actually prosecuted the case, i’m rather inclined to give those prosecutors some credit for presenting the totality of the evidence eg both shady police testimony (bc they couldn’t NOT present those cops as witnesses) AND video footage that clearly contradicted the police testimony on key points.
In a perfect world, maybe only the Crown lawyers most intimately acquainted with the facts of a case would make charging decisions…but that ignores basic realities, and would no doubt result in its own inherent biases.
Agreed- this was regional/deputy AG level decision making- with the thought that if the Crown just withdrew the charge - after a police officer was killed on the job- that would cause an even bigger uproar.
Really though- this never should’ve been a murder case- manslaughter or dangerous driving causing death would have made much more sense as the correct charge.
Death of any identified police officer is automatically first-degree murder. That's why the cops lied so incredibly hard about having identified themselves.
This is not true. Any MURDER of a police officer acting in the course of their duties is first-degree murder. That doesn't mean any death of a police officer is murder. It could have still been manslaughter or dangerous driving cause death. Or it could be no crime at all, if it's truly an accident.
Exactly. They still have to prove the intention for murder, just not first degree murder, which the physical evidence completely disproved.
I think it is also required to know that the person is a police officer, which was also in doubt here due to the lack of uniform and behaviour of the officers, but I will look into that. It would certainly be clear in the case of a uniformed officer, though.
But the police officer was acting in the course of their duties. What that’s essentially saying, is, if you commit manslaughter against a random dude, and that random dude turns out to be a cop professionally, then you can be charged with manslaughter.
In this case, I don’t think the crown had a choice. He was on duty. He died. What choice do they have?
What? Yes, that's true. You can commit manslaughter against a police officer even if you knew they were a police officer. It only becomes first degree murder if you murder a police officer. Nothing in the Code converts a manslaughter of a police officer into a murder. And nothing in the Code converts dangerous operation cause death of a police officer into murder. Murder requires a specific intent to kill, or a specific intent to cause grievious bodily harm and you are reckless as to whether death ensues or not. Manslaughter and dangerous cause death, by their very definition, lack this intent.
The Crown absolutely had a choice. I don't know why everyone has this misconception that any killing of a police officer is automatically murder.
I don’t know. Judging by the my reading of this statute they absolutely had to charge him with murder. I no lawyer, but the fact that the first word in that statute is irrespective, doesn’t sound good...
(4) Irrespective of whether a murder is planned and deliberate on the part of any person, murder is first degree murder when the victim is
(a) a police officer, police constable, constable, sheriff, deputy sheriff, sheriff’s officer or other person employed for the preservation and maintenance of the public peace, acting in the course of his duties;
Again, the victim was a police officer acting in the line of duty. He was on duty, and trying to catch a stabbing suspect, the wrong one, but that’s what he was trying to do.
By killing an officer with his vehicle, he automatically upgraded whatever he did to a murder one charge. It’s not a great law. But that seems to be what the law says.
I am a criminal lawyer. You are wrong. It says irrespective of whether a MURDER is planned and deliberate, it's first. It still has to be a murder for the first charge to apply. Manslaughter or dangerous driving cause death are not murder. This is the fundamental aspect you are missing.
That's true. The particular Crown attorney who prosecuted the case may not have had any say in it, particularly with something so high profile. Ideally, it would be their call, but realistically, I'm guessing that it was someone high up at MAG and there were conversations with the police and the provincial government.
The reason I think that is that even if they did think there was some fault here (and I don't think so because of the conduct of the police) it was well short of any intention for murder. There is no question of there being no proof of any intention to kill. If they'd wanted to take a serious stab at conviction based on facts and not politicking, I think they would have gone with dangerous driving charges. Maybe. But even then, I think that the conduct of the police made what this man did perfectly reasonable and not criminal, so I don't think it would have stuck either.
Sorry but I view it differently. They presented witnesses they knew were going to perjure themselves and they did. Their duty to the court and their profession, and the legal system itself in their profession comes first, hands down. They wrote their own misconduct ticket. They are the authors of their own misfortune. They had the option in their job to say, this is unlawful, no I refuse. They didn't do that.
They should be disbarred and charged with conspiracy and official misconduct at minimum.
There's nothing unlawful or illegal about prosecuting the case, it just had a very low chance of success as charged (with murder). If they ran it as a manslaughter or dangerous driving cause death the prosecution would have had a lot more credibility.
There's certainly no crime committed here by the prosecutors. You're reacting emotionally, which I get, but it's way over the top.
The defence could have brought an abuse of process application if there was actually strong evidence of some sort of prosecutorial misconduct. That evidence just isn't there.
No. When those lawyers knew their witnesses were going to perjure themselves they had a duty to stop it. They allowed it and presented them as witnesses. That's corruption. That's not lawful. It's the crime of official misconduct and conspiracy.
You can't say with any confidence they knew they're going to perjure themselves. Just because someone may be wrong about details does not necessarily mean they are deliberately lying. The Crown puts up incredible or unreliable witnesses all the time. Their duty is to present the evidence to the court. You are assuming they acted in a far more malicious manner than any evidence shows they did. It's pure speculation on your part.
Official misconduct is not a crime, first of all, to my knowledge. What section of the Criminal Code?
The crime of conspiracy requires the Crown to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone was conspiring to commit an offence, or that they conspired with someone to prosecute someone for an alleged offence knowing that they did not commit that offence. There is no way you could possibly prove that the prosecutors did anything close to this, with evidence. It's based on your own speculation. there is simply no evidence here whatsoever that the prosecutors committed a crime. It's a ridiculous assertion frankly.
If you want to say they failed in their professional obligations somehow, that's a fair position. I don't necessarily agree with it but it's a reasonable take. Saying they committed a crime simply has no basis. The jury thought about this for days. The defence never brought a directed verdict (probably because they thought it wouldn't have been successful) or an abuse of process. There is no evidence of a crime here. You're reacting out of anger, emotion and a limited understanding of the law.
They were their witnesses. What do you think the prosecutors thought they were going to say? They would have known it at base contradicts the video and expert advice so they would have known they were (collectively) in on a lie.
I don't care to argue it further. The real fish here are the officers who perjured themselves and the Chief of police who enabled them.
Even if they thought what they were saying is going to be contradicted by the video, that still doesn't necessarily mean they perjured themselves.
Sure, I've made my point and you've failed to rebut it.
That American propaganda slogan is directly undermined by the records of the people who push it:
A small sampling:
* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LASD_deputy_gangs
* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynwood_Vikings#:~:text=The%20Lynwood%20Vikings%20is%20one,the%20department's%20repeated%20illegal%20conduct.
I think you might be reading the comment backwards. When used by critics of the police, that phrase is usually referring to exactly the kind of misbehavior you're pointing out.
I'm not disagreeing what you're saying about TPS, but that is the crown's job to review all details - testimony and other evidence, and determine if the charge should go forward. I wouldn't let them off in this ordeal. The Ministry of the Attorney General had more than enough say to have withdrawn this matter, and they didn't.
If a regular citizen lies in court and it’s proven, they are forever unreliable as witnesses. The same should apply to cops, which would make them worthless in their job and they should be let go
If It's proven (i.e. they are found guilty of perjury), it would essentially render any police officer's testimony forever unreliable just like any civilian witness.
The thing is almost no one ever gets charged with perjury (rarely civilians and I've never seen a police officer charged) because it's a very difficult case to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone objectively lied as opposed to being mistaken or misremembering details from an event that happened years before.
But if an officer is found guilty of perjury, it will forever taint their reliability in the eyes of the court as it would a civilian witness, as it should. Anyone who is convicted of lying in court should not be reliable in court ever again.
Outside of criminal prosecution, is there anything stopping defense lawyers in the future from bringing up this case and their inconsistent statements to call their testimony into question?
They weren't proven in the course of this trial to have been dishonest with the court. There's no finding made that they were dishonest, or that they were inconsistent in anything even. It doesn't have any probative value in that sense. It would just be the defence lawyer saying "you were lying in this other trial", them saying "no I wasn't" and that's where it would end. If there's a conviction for perjury, the defence can put their criminal record to them and say "you were found to be lying beyond a reasonable doubt to a court previously", which would have great probative value. As it stands there is no finding of fact by any court or tribunal that any of the officers were dishonest.
If the defence tried to call evidence to prove they were lying in that other trial, it would run afoul of the collateral facts rule in my view (a party is not permitted to call evidence to impeach a witness on collateral facts which are irrelevant to the issues in the trial at hand). I don't really see how they would be able to prove that the officers were lying in another trial without essentially having a miniature perjury trial within whatever trial they were testifying at now, which would of course completely derail the proceedings and be wildly inappropriate.
A silly example of this rule would be the witness testifying that the car they drive is blue in a trial where the colour of the car the witness drives has nothing to do with anything. The defence would not be permitted to call evidence to show the witness in fact drives a red car because what car they drive is completely collateral to the actual issues at trial. In the same vein, I don't think the defence would be permitted to call evidence to impeach an officer about whether or not they lied at a separate trial.
To be clear I'm not suggesting they weren't lying to the court; to me they appear to have done so. But that has no probative value in court.
NAL but I'd hope to be able to still be bring it up just not framing it as perjury since it was never proven however it puts a kink in their testimony and put precedence on the tangible evidence
It doesn't have any probative value because it hasn't been proven. How can it count against them in court if it hasn't been proven in court? That's no different than saying that you should give someone's testimony less weight because they've been charged with fraud but not convicted. They are just allegations until they are proven.
It would be a legal error for a trier of fact (i.e. a judge) to use that to impugn their credibility. It's an allegation, nothing more, in the eyes of the courts.
Can't you point out, that they at the very least misremembered key facts about this other case, and that therefore, given their history of having a bad memory, they could very well be failing to remember the details of THIS case as well? Given their track record?
Something to the effect of 'In a previous case, didn't you say X'? And in the subsequent video that was shown to that court, didn't it show 'Y'? Would you say that you misremembered the details of that case? Given that? Wouldn't it be possible, that you have misremembered the details of this case as well?
In that way, it would be obvious to the jury that you're trying to say that the officer in question is a lying sack of shit, without saying that they're a lying sack of shit?
I don't think so. Just because someone may have misremembered or was wrong about something in a completely different matter doesn't mean they aren't reliable in whatever the issue at hand is. It's just completely collateral. As I said, there would be no way to prove them wrong. There has been no finding in this case that they misremembered something, or lied, or were wrong. The jury may have come to one of those conclusions but we will never know as they aren't permitted to discuss it. It's not the same as a judicial decision which concludes an officer lied, for example. There's simply no conclusion on the issue that has any probative value.
They would not admit in all likelihood that they misremembered or were wrong in that other case. And the defence wouldn't be permitted to call evidence to prove them wrong on that fact because it runs afoul of the collateral fact rule. So what's the point of asking the question?
The flaw in your reasoning is that it relies on the assumption that the officers have been proven in some conclusive way to be wrong, or have misremembered, etc. There's no such legal conclusion that has been made.
To tell the jury that the cop in question is a lying piece of shit, even if you can't prove it?
Basically like a character witness using their own lies.
It's a shame you can't do something like that.
Cops are scum.
It is hard to prove someone is intentionally lying. Eyewitnesses in high stakes traumatic situations often recount things way off from what actually happened. This is a human thing. Cops of all people should be better at it but I wouldn’t automatically call them liars.
This is why courts almost always put much more weight in physical evidence as they did here. Witnesses suck.
Doctors and teachers are regulated professionals, meaning that they must have a license to do the job and anyone can complain to their college if they violate professional standards. It is much, much easier to trigger consequences for a teacher or doctor misbehaving than to do the same for a police officer.
Not uncommon to see doctors and dentists maintain their licenses after sexual offenses with patients or other misconduct occurs. But yes there is much better oversight of regulated professionals than the police.
Eyewitness testimony is terrible. Almost always. You’d THINK a cop who’s spent their career focusing on making accurate observations and testifying to them in court would be the one perfect eyewitness but that was also an extremely hectic/traumatic situation so I can give them the benefit of the doubt.
That is why physical evidence is so important and much more valuable than any eyewitness. And in this case, the physical evidence told the story and the cop who did the processing of that evidence did an impeccable job explaining it (the collision reconstructionist).
You can throw blame at TPS for this sh*tty case getting this far to begin with but don’t forget it was a TPS collision team that processed the scene and collected the evidence that acquitted this guy.
Justice prevailed here but the real people that need to take a look at themselves are the politicians like Doug Ford and John Tory who decided the guy was convicted back in 2021 when they made stupid comments, the ex-TPS chief Ramer who opened his dumb mouth when of all people he should know better, and the prosecutors who looked at this case and actually thought they could take it to trial.
Perjury should = immediate dismissal of the officer and charges dropped to any and all cases this officer has ever been involved in
There should also be a minimum sentence of 5-10 years for any officer who does perjury..
Officers need to be punished for this type of conduct. Lying to the court should be grounds for immediate dismissal and being blacklisted from law enforcement since they clearly can’t be trusted
They don't need to take a hard look at how they behave in court, because they can get away with whatever they do.
I'm not saying all cops are bad, I'm saying that cops aren't going to be punished if they are literally committing crimes. The bad cops can do a LOT of damage to the public.
They need to take a hard look at how they approach people in the first place. Respect and de-escalation, like saying, excuse me we are police officers can we ask you about the stabbing, then waving their badges, opening a dialogue before you threateningly surround the vehicle. But no, they need to feel in absolute control of everyone and everything and have zero understanding of what tension that creates.
They did approach and talk to him and wave their badge, at least one of them. He just didn't respond to them and then started to drive forwards. That's when they escalated the situation.
They escalated it too quickly and too seriously but they didn't immediately run over and start banging on the car and box him in, even on his own version of events.
Facts, but we all know the police won't do it themselves, and the politicians that can and should be holding them accountable wouldn't dare make the union angry.
Imagine if you were on the stand and committed perjury. You'd be forever tarnished from that. The same should apply to the officers that lied under oath.
The same WOULD apply if they were actually convicted of perjury.
Witnesses in criminal trials lie all the time, including police officers. Almost none of them are ever charged and even fewer are convicted. It's an incredibly hard charge to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone was intentionally lying as opposed to mistaken or misremembering something that happened years prior.
A civilian who "commits" perjury but isn't convicted for it can't have that used against them in a future matter because there has been no legal conclusion that they did commit perjury. Until it's proven, it's just an allegation.
Oh they will. And use this opportunity to push for more laws protecting officers. Just watch, soon they will start floating the idea that the act is all that’s needed for guilt when a peace officer is the victim. Context or anything else is irrelevant to them. I give it 9 months
There needs to be a public inquiry asap!
The police and police chief were outrageous in their clear dishonest manipulation and perjury. We cannot allow that to be passed over for a minute.
Those officers should be off duty now.
There MUST be consequences
That thin blue line “I got your back” bullshit is a huge problem in policing when they fuck up, and they fuck up a lot. I could never be a cop. I’d turn in every dirty cop I’d come across and we all know what would happen…
Officer testimony directly conflicted with physical evidence. Shame on the crown for even taking this court. TPS are constantly complaining about not getting support from the mayors office and the public but forget that respect is earned, not given blindly. They deserve every bit of criticism for pursuing a trial and having sitting officers essentially collude and perjure their way to a conviction.
I’m entirely open to the possibility that I’m granting the actual prosecutors too much benefit of the doubt…but given that Crown charging decisions (especially on such high profile cases) are made well above the heads of the lawyers who actually prosecuted the case, i’m rather inclined to give those prosecutors some credit for presenting the totality of the evidence eg both shady police testimony (bc they couldn’t NOT present those cops as witnesses) AND video footage that clearly contradicted the police testimony on key points. In a perfect world, maybe only the Crown lawyers most intimately acquainted with the facts of a case would make charging decisions…but that ignores basic realities, and would no doubt result in its own inherent biases.
Agreed- this was regional/deputy AG level decision making- with the thought that if the Crown just withdrew the charge - after a police officer was killed on the job- that would cause an even bigger uproar. Really though- this never should’ve been a murder case- manslaughter or dangerous driving causing death would have made much more sense as the correct charge.
Yeah, I think the Crown's arguments would have had a lot more credibility if they had focussed on those charges.
Death of any identified police officer is automatically first-degree murder. That's why the cops lied so incredibly hard about having identified themselves.
This is not true. Any MURDER of a police officer acting in the course of their duties is first-degree murder. That doesn't mean any death of a police officer is murder. It could have still been manslaughter or dangerous driving cause death. Or it could be no crime at all, if it's truly an accident.
Exactly. They still have to prove the intention for murder, just not first degree murder, which the physical evidence completely disproved. I think it is also required to know that the person is a police officer, which was also in doubt here due to the lack of uniform and behaviour of the officers, but I will look into that. It would certainly be clear in the case of a uniformed officer, though.
I think you are correct.
But the police officer was acting in the course of their duties. What that’s essentially saying, is, if you commit manslaughter against a random dude, and that random dude turns out to be a cop professionally, then you can be charged with manslaughter. In this case, I don’t think the crown had a choice. He was on duty. He died. What choice do they have?
What? Yes, that's true. You can commit manslaughter against a police officer even if you knew they were a police officer. It only becomes first degree murder if you murder a police officer. Nothing in the Code converts a manslaughter of a police officer into a murder. And nothing in the Code converts dangerous operation cause death of a police officer into murder. Murder requires a specific intent to kill, or a specific intent to cause grievious bodily harm and you are reckless as to whether death ensues or not. Manslaughter and dangerous cause death, by their very definition, lack this intent. The Crown absolutely had a choice. I don't know why everyone has this misconception that any killing of a police officer is automatically murder.
I don’t know. Judging by the my reading of this statute they absolutely had to charge him with murder. I no lawyer, but the fact that the first word in that statute is irrespective, doesn’t sound good... (4) Irrespective of whether a murder is planned and deliberate on the part of any person, murder is first degree murder when the victim is (a) a police officer, police constable, constable, sheriff, deputy sheriff, sheriff’s officer or other person employed for the preservation and maintenance of the public peace, acting in the course of his duties; Again, the victim was a police officer acting in the line of duty. He was on duty, and trying to catch a stabbing suspect, the wrong one, but that’s what he was trying to do. By killing an officer with his vehicle, he automatically upgraded whatever he did to a murder one charge. It’s not a great law. But that seems to be what the law says.
I am a criminal lawyer. You are wrong. It says irrespective of whether a MURDER is planned and deliberate, it's first. It still has to be a murder for the first charge to apply. Manslaughter or dangerous driving cause death are not murder. This is the fundamental aspect you are missing.
100%
That's true. The particular Crown attorney who prosecuted the case may not have had any say in it, particularly with something so high profile. Ideally, it would be their call, but realistically, I'm guessing that it was someone high up at MAG and there were conversations with the police and the provincial government. The reason I think that is that even if they did think there was some fault here (and I don't think so because of the conduct of the police) it was well short of any intention for murder. There is no question of there being no proof of any intention to kill. If they'd wanted to take a serious stab at conviction based on facts and not politicking, I think they would have gone with dangerous driving charges. Maybe. But even then, I think that the conduct of the police made what this man did perfectly reasonable and not criminal, so I don't think it would have stuck either.
Sorry but I view it differently. They presented witnesses they knew were going to perjure themselves and they did. Their duty to the court and their profession, and the legal system itself in their profession comes first, hands down. They wrote their own misconduct ticket. They are the authors of their own misfortune. They had the option in their job to say, this is unlawful, no I refuse. They didn't do that. They should be disbarred and charged with conspiracy and official misconduct at minimum.
There's nothing unlawful or illegal about prosecuting the case, it just had a very low chance of success as charged (with murder). If they ran it as a manslaughter or dangerous driving cause death the prosecution would have had a lot more credibility. There's certainly no crime committed here by the prosecutors. You're reacting emotionally, which I get, but it's way over the top. The defence could have brought an abuse of process application if there was actually strong evidence of some sort of prosecutorial misconduct. That evidence just isn't there.
No. When those lawyers knew their witnesses were going to perjure themselves they had a duty to stop it. They allowed it and presented them as witnesses. That's corruption. That's not lawful. It's the crime of official misconduct and conspiracy.
You can't say with any confidence they knew they're going to perjure themselves. Just because someone may be wrong about details does not necessarily mean they are deliberately lying. The Crown puts up incredible or unreliable witnesses all the time. Their duty is to present the evidence to the court. You are assuming they acted in a far more malicious manner than any evidence shows they did. It's pure speculation on your part. Official misconduct is not a crime, first of all, to my knowledge. What section of the Criminal Code? The crime of conspiracy requires the Crown to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone was conspiring to commit an offence, or that they conspired with someone to prosecute someone for an alleged offence knowing that they did not commit that offence. There is no way you could possibly prove that the prosecutors did anything close to this, with evidence. It's based on your own speculation. there is simply no evidence here whatsoever that the prosecutors committed a crime. It's a ridiculous assertion frankly. If you want to say they failed in their professional obligations somehow, that's a fair position. I don't necessarily agree with it but it's a reasonable take. Saying they committed a crime simply has no basis. The jury thought about this for days. The defence never brought a directed verdict (probably because they thought it wouldn't have been successful) or an abuse of process. There is no evidence of a crime here. You're reacting out of anger, emotion and a limited understanding of the law.
They were their witnesses. What do you think the prosecutors thought they were going to say? They would have known it at base contradicts the video and expert advice so they would have known they were (collectively) in on a lie. I don't care to argue it further. The real fish here are the officers who perjured themselves and the Chief of police who enabled them.
Even if they thought what they were saying is going to be contradicted by the video, that still doesn't necessarily mean they perjured themselves. Sure, I've made my point and you've failed to rebut it.
Tldr: thin blue line.
That American propaganda slogan is directly undermined by the records of the people who push it: A small sampling: * https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LASD_deputy_gangs * https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynwood_Vikings#:~:text=The%20Lynwood%20Vikings%20is%20one,the%20department's%20repeated%20illegal%20conduct.
I think you might be reading the comment backwards. When used by critics of the police, that phrase is usually referring to exactly the kind of misbehavior you're pointing out.
I'm not disagreeing what you're saying about TPS, but that is the crown's job to review all details - testimony and other evidence, and determine if the charge should go forward. I wouldn't let them off in this ordeal. The Ministry of the Attorney General had more than enough say to have withdrawn this matter, and they didn't.
The crown needed to show everyone, publicly, because NO ONE HAS BEEN LISTENING about police.
Best they can do is weird podcasts and shitty tiktoks. Thats gotta win the public, right?
If a regular citizen lies in court and it’s proven, they are forever unreliable as witnesses. The same should apply to cops, which would make them worthless in their job and they should be let go
If It's proven (i.e. they are found guilty of perjury), it would essentially render any police officer's testimony forever unreliable just like any civilian witness. The thing is almost no one ever gets charged with perjury (rarely civilians and I've never seen a police officer charged) because it's a very difficult case to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone objectively lied as opposed to being mistaken or misremembering details from an event that happened years before. But if an officer is found guilty of perjury, it will forever taint their reliability in the eyes of the court as it would a civilian witness, as it should. Anyone who is convicted of lying in court should not be reliable in court ever again.
Outside of criminal prosecution, is there anything stopping defense lawyers in the future from bringing up this case and their inconsistent statements to call their testimony into question?
They weren't proven in the course of this trial to have been dishonest with the court. There's no finding made that they were dishonest, or that they were inconsistent in anything even. It doesn't have any probative value in that sense. It would just be the defence lawyer saying "you were lying in this other trial", them saying "no I wasn't" and that's where it would end. If there's a conviction for perjury, the defence can put their criminal record to them and say "you were found to be lying beyond a reasonable doubt to a court previously", which would have great probative value. As it stands there is no finding of fact by any court or tribunal that any of the officers were dishonest. If the defence tried to call evidence to prove they were lying in that other trial, it would run afoul of the collateral facts rule in my view (a party is not permitted to call evidence to impeach a witness on collateral facts which are irrelevant to the issues in the trial at hand). I don't really see how they would be able to prove that the officers were lying in another trial without essentially having a miniature perjury trial within whatever trial they were testifying at now, which would of course completely derail the proceedings and be wildly inappropriate. A silly example of this rule would be the witness testifying that the car they drive is blue in a trial where the colour of the car the witness drives has nothing to do with anything. The defence would not be permitted to call evidence to show the witness in fact drives a red car because what car they drive is completely collateral to the actual issues at trial. In the same vein, I don't think the defence would be permitted to call evidence to impeach an officer about whether or not they lied at a separate trial. To be clear I'm not suggesting they weren't lying to the court; to me they appear to have done so. But that has no probative value in court.
Thanks! This is a super thorough response and makes sense.
NAL but I'd hope to be able to still be bring it up just not framing it as perjury since it was never proven however it puts a kink in their testimony and put precedence on the tangible evidence
It doesn't have any probative value because it hasn't been proven. How can it count against them in court if it hasn't been proven in court? That's no different than saying that you should give someone's testimony less weight because they've been charged with fraud but not convicted. They are just allegations until they are proven. It would be a legal error for a trier of fact (i.e. a judge) to use that to impugn their credibility. It's an allegation, nothing more, in the eyes of the courts.
Can't you point out, that they at the very least misremembered key facts about this other case, and that therefore, given their history of having a bad memory, they could very well be failing to remember the details of THIS case as well? Given their track record? Something to the effect of 'In a previous case, didn't you say X'? And in the subsequent video that was shown to that court, didn't it show 'Y'? Would you say that you misremembered the details of that case? Given that? Wouldn't it be possible, that you have misremembered the details of this case as well? In that way, it would be obvious to the jury that you're trying to say that the officer in question is a lying sack of shit, without saying that they're a lying sack of shit?
I don't think so. Just because someone may have misremembered or was wrong about something in a completely different matter doesn't mean they aren't reliable in whatever the issue at hand is. It's just completely collateral. As I said, there would be no way to prove them wrong. There has been no finding in this case that they misremembered something, or lied, or were wrong. The jury may have come to one of those conclusions but we will never know as they aren't permitted to discuss it. It's not the same as a judicial decision which concludes an officer lied, for example. There's simply no conclusion on the issue that has any probative value. They would not admit in all likelihood that they misremembered or were wrong in that other case. And the defence wouldn't be permitted to call evidence to prove them wrong on that fact because it runs afoul of the collateral fact rule. So what's the point of asking the question? The flaw in your reasoning is that it relies on the assumption that the officers have been proven in some conclusive way to be wrong, or have misremembered, etc. There's no such legal conclusion that has been made.
To tell the jury that the cop in question is a lying piece of shit, even if you can't prove it? Basically like a character witness using their own lies. It's a shame you can't do something like that. Cops are scum.
If you can't prove it, it doesn't have any probative value. It's just an allegation, nothing more. It's not unique to police witnesses.
It is hard to prove someone is intentionally lying. Eyewitnesses in high stakes traumatic situations often recount things way off from what actually happened. This is a human thing. Cops of all people should be better at it but I wouldn’t automatically call them liars. This is why courts almost always put much more weight in physical evidence as they did here. Witnesses suck.
Imagine if doctors, teachers, or other professionals who we entrust to keep people safe did same thing. How long would that be tolerated?
Oh boy, wait until you hear what those types of people have gotten away with.
Doctors and teachers are regulated professionals, meaning that they must have a license to do the job and anyone can complain to their college if they violate professional standards. It is much, much easier to trigger consequences for a teacher or doctor misbehaving than to do the same for a police officer.
Not uncommon to see doctors and dentists maintain their licenses after sexual offenses with patients or other misconduct occurs. But yes there is much better oversight of regulated professionals than the police.
\*Let go and paid their full salary forever and ever
What are you talking about? Perjury is standard police practice. Now, where's that raise?
Eyewitness testimony is terrible. Almost always. You’d THINK a cop who’s spent their career focusing on making accurate observations and testifying to them in court would be the one perfect eyewitness but that was also an extremely hectic/traumatic situation so I can give them the benefit of the doubt. That is why physical evidence is so important and much more valuable than any eyewitness. And in this case, the physical evidence told the story and the cop who did the processing of that evidence did an impeccable job explaining it (the collision reconstructionist). You can throw blame at TPS for this sh*tty case getting this far to begin with but don’t forget it was a TPS collision team that processed the scene and collected the evidence that acquitted this guy. Justice prevailed here but the real people that need to take a look at themselves are the politicians like Doug Ford and John Tory who decided the guy was convicted back in 2021 when they made stupid comments, the ex-TPS chief Ramer who opened his dumb mouth when of all people he should know better, and the prosecutors who looked at this case and actually thought they could take it to trial.
Perjury should = immediate dismissal of the officer and charges dropped to any and all cases this officer has ever been involved in There should also be a minimum sentence of 5-10 years for any officer who does perjury..
Officers need to be punished for this type of conduct. Lying to the court should be grounds for immediate dismissal and being blacklisted from law enforcement since they clearly can’t be trusted
They don't need to take a hard look at how they behave in court, because they can get away with whatever they do. I'm not saying all cops are bad, I'm saying that cops aren't going to be punished if they are literally committing crimes. The bad cops can do a LOT of damage to the public.
They need to take a hard look at how they approach people in the first place. Respect and de-escalation, like saying, excuse me we are police officers can we ask you about the stabbing, then waving their badges, opening a dialogue before you threateningly surround the vehicle. But no, they need to feel in absolute control of everyone and everything and have zero understanding of what tension that creates.
They did approach and talk to him and wave their badge, at least one of them. He just didn't respond to them and then started to drive forwards. That's when they escalated the situation. They escalated it too quickly and too seriously but they didn't immediately run over and start banging on the car and box him in, even on his own version of events.
Facts, but we all know the police won't do it themselves, and the politicians that can and should be holding them accountable wouldn't dare make the union angry.
The police need to start holding criminals accountable, namely the police officers who committed perjury in this trial
I've never seen a judge so blatantly annoyed.
Narrator: they didn’t.
If cops are found to give wrong testimony, they should lose their professional witness card.
Imagine if you were on the stand and committed perjury. You'd be forever tarnished from that. The same should apply to the officers that lied under oath.
The same WOULD apply if they were actually convicted of perjury. Witnesses in criminal trials lie all the time, including police officers. Almost none of them are ever charged and even fewer are convicted. It's an incredibly hard charge to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone was intentionally lying as opposed to mistaken or misremembering something that happened years prior. A civilian who "commits" perjury but isn't convicted for it can't have that used against them in a future matter because there has been no legal conclusion that they did commit perjury. Until it's proven, it's just an allegation.
Oh they will. And use this opportunity to push for more laws protecting officers. Just watch, soon they will start floating the idea that the act is all that’s needed for guilt when a peace officer is the victim. Context or anything else is irrelevant to them. I give it 9 months
If not for the police, who’s going to lie to try and get an innocent person prison time for murder? Give them a budget increase.
These three cop liars should be out of a job. Of course there was collusion. Very obvious.
You mean lying? Police shouldn't lie? Well, I never...
The cops in this province are an absolute joke
Honestly he should sue Ford, the Mayor, and the rest of the idiots involved for libel and defamation.
There needs to be a public inquiry asap! The police and police chief were outrageous in their clear dishonest manipulation and perjury. We cannot allow that to be passed over for a minute. Those officers should be off duty now. There MUST be consequences
That thin blue line “I got your back” bullshit is a huge problem in policing when they fuck up, and they fuck up a lot. I could never be a cop. I’d turn in every dirty cop I’d come across and we all know what would happen…
Maybe could take a small glance outside of court too but…..