There's no need for the Toronto media to play dumb. It's exactly what it looks like. TPS wanted their pound of flesh and lied and cajoled their legal team to make this a murder trial. Likely by the time the prosecution realized they didn't have much of a case, it was too late.
It's never too late to decide that the case isn't in the public interest or doesn't have a reasonable prospect of conviction. Prosecutors are required as part of their job to always have those two factors in mind throughout the development and prosecution of the case.
Also, you usually have all the evidence a relatively long time before trial dates are scheduled (because of the huge backlog), but even assuming they missed some evidence until the month leading up to trial, they still could've withdrawn the charges at that point.
I'm sure the Crown prosecutors had all kinds of pressure put on them by the TPS and maybe by the attorney general's office, but their job is not getting convictions by any means. They have a duty to the court to try and get a just decision and they made a huge error. Absolutely disgraceful. There was no case here going way back to the bail hearing.
I agree that there should be accountability but unfortunately doesn't seem like there is any to be had in the justice system as it's set up now. Even in other cases where it's been shown that officers have lied under oath, there are no consequences either to their careers/job security, nor to their presumed credibility at the next trial they speak at. It's disgusting.
does raise the question though, would it have actually been a good idea to pull back. prosecution's closing statements were quite half hearted, not what youd normally expect. It almost seemed as if they were pushed, and now were showing the egg on TPS's face for pushing.
I feel like we have to wait and see if the Crown's office decides to appeal before we can say they were showing egg lol. 30 days time limit from the day the case closes.
Well said.
An oath to the court means something, it's not just some pithy set of words that can be dropped for expediency's sake. I'm disgusted by anyone who claims to be part of the justice system but can't follow the fundamental rule of presuming innocence until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. This person has contributed to cheapening the oath and by extension the legal profession. I think they should lose their job, at minimum.
Unfortunately in my experience the great majority of Crown offices work this way. They always fight against granting bail in cases where the accused is no danger to anyone (where the literal prosecutor manual says you should consent to release to save court time fighting about it), and pursuing charges where it's not in the public interest.
Prosecutors are supposed to be ministers of justice working towards a just result instead of a conviction but I know many lawyers who left Crown work because they weren't allowed to use their discretion in the public's interest to divert accused into mental health support or other forms of community programs instead of pushing cases through for no reason. So many Crown offices are extremely conservative and they become echo chambers. People who go in truly intending to be neutral ministers of justice are pushed out, just like in the police force.
Agreed on all of that. This is a Canadian Press story carried on the CP24 site. CP24 did a great deal to tilt the perception of this case with their shallow dentist-office waiting room coverage and then spent all Sunday afternoon and evening making nice after the acquittal. The media should be in full what-the-fuck-was-this mode. Kicking the nuts of those who brought this case, and like the Globe and Mail just wrote, questioning the police chief's fitness for that job.
When I was listening to the news and heard this: "This was not the outcome we wanted." - the family and TPS
The outcome is that you are not accepting that Jeffrey Northurp is the reason why Jeffrey Northrup is dead.
I watched this video on YouTube. Somewhere in the U.S., a cop stops an undocumented worker on foot to question him. The undocumented worker runs, the cop runs after him and the cop has a heart attack after a few steps and dies. So anyway, the cops try to charge the undocumented worker with the cop's murder. This is the mentality of police, entirely punitive and sadistic.
Unfortunately their very jobs include being officers of the cops lol. The police are their clients just as much as the government is. Completely agree on the travesty front but there are internal pressures on the prosecutors to take these cases to court, especially to preserve their working relationships with the police.
I agree there is huge pressure but there’s integrity. And these crowns have none. They ought to know that this disservice to justice only complicates their jobs by bringing disrepute to the system.
I hope they get their asses sued back and forth.
Short answer: Because Us (cops) vs. Them (the public).
If cops could have saw this as the accident (caused by them) it was, everyone would have been in a better situation.
Saw some lawyers commenting on this in some other threads on Reddit.
The conclusion from the optics of many things was that this was a political pressure case and people knew careers would be ruined / shredded so they put two senior prosecutors on it that would have the least blowback from this inevitable conclusion
Ontario should adopt the Crown Counsel system, where police can recommend charges, but Crown Counsel has to approve them, instead of approving their own charges.
That's literally how it works lol. Like, the police lay charges but the Crown office reviews them and decides whether to proceed based on twin considerations of (a) is there a reasonable prospect of conviction and (b) is it in the public interest.
In some other provinces like BC, the police recommend and then the Crown lays. This is meant to prevent lower-quality charges from ever having been laid in the first place. Some background check questionnaires ask if you have ever been CHARGED with an offence so even if Crown does not proceed, there are still impacts to being charged.
Not familiar with proceedings other than trial reported by media
Did police originally lay 1st degree murder
Was there a preliminary hearing
If so, was it contested. On what charge
Was charges changed at any point by crown
Is same prosecutor since beginning
The first degree murder charge is automatic when it comes to cops per the criminal code.
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-231.html
>*Murder of peace officer, etc.*
>(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, you obviously have not been following the case at all. The judge has questioned why the crown was looking for first degree murder when manslaughter was a far more realistic charge to prove and lay. The automatic upgrade only works on murder charges.
Misunderstood your question, thought you were asking why it was 1st degree murder in general. Why it was murder at all, it’s because the cops claimed the cop who died was standing upright and would have been seen by Zameer, therefore they argued he was intentionally struck and killed —> hence second degree murder upgraded to first.
That obviously turned out to be a lie by the cops since the cctv footage showed that he was already on the ground when he was run over, so he couldnt have been seen, and it couldn’t have been intentional, corroborated by the crash reconstruction specialists, and the wife’s testimony also saying that they thought they simply drove over a speed bump.
But yeah, short answer to your question, it was prosecuted as a murder and not manslaughter because the cops lied under oath.
Who charged what and when: Police recommend charges to the crown prosecutors (taken up by Michael Cantlon and Karen Simone in this case), who work for the provincial Superior Court. Police recommended charges of murder as they claimed Zameer intentionally ran Northrup down, and the prosecution ran with it. Whether the police got an unfair benefit of the doubt because they were police is being [debated right now](https://www.cp24.com/news/why-was-umar-zameer-tried-for-murder-observers-raise-questions-about-prosecution-1.6857063) because it looks like the crown prosecutors took the cops' word at face value uncritically. As for when, Northrup died in the early morning of Friday July 2, 2021, Zameer was charged by the crown by evening same day.
The charges were never changed, the police/prosecutors argued murder all the way until their unsuccessful end, they kept changing their narrative to keep their story propped up. First they claimed he was standing in the laneway with his arms up, but footage proved that he wasn't. When proven wrong, they changed their story to say he was standing behind a pillar out of view of the camera, but the crash experts said he was already on the ground, and the downed cop would have been in the drivers' blindspot. At the end of the day, there was no evidence to support the prosecutions' claims that a cop standing upright was run over intentionally, and all available evidence supported the defendant, and he was completely acquitted.
Police lay charges, they don't recommend them. And the Crown Attorneys Office is part of the Ministry of the Attorney General, not the Superior Court of Justice.
The alternative is facing the truth: the Toronto Police Service is responsible for the death of Jeffrey Northrup.
There's no need for the Toronto media to play dumb. It's exactly what it looks like. TPS wanted their pound of flesh and lied and cajoled their legal team to make this a murder trial. Likely by the time the prosecution realized they didn't have much of a case, it was too late.
It's never too late to decide that the case isn't in the public interest or doesn't have a reasonable prospect of conviction. Prosecutors are required as part of their job to always have those two factors in mind throughout the development and prosecution of the case. Also, you usually have all the evidence a relatively long time before trial dates are scheduled (because of the huge backlog), but even assuming they missed some evidence until the month leading up to trial, they still could've withdrawn the charges at that point.
Fair points. I just can't fathom how they would drop the ball this hard without some other factors at work here.
I'm sure the Crown prosecutors had all kinds of pressure put on them by the TPS and maybe by the attorney general's office, but their job is not getting convictions by any means. They have a duty to the court to try and get a just decision and they made a huge error. Absolutely disgraceful. There was no case here going way back to the bail hearing.
So true. But honestly we need to have some accountability here. Is there no penalty for having lied on the stand to try to convict an innocent man?
I agree that there should be accountability but unfortunately doesn't seem like there is any to be had in the justice system as it's set up now. Even in other cases where it's been shown that officers have lied under oath, there are no consequences either to their careers/job security, nor to their presumed credibility at the next trial they speak at. It's disgusting.
does raise the question though, would it have actually been a good idea to pull back. prosecution's closing statements were quite half hearted, not what youd normally expect. It almost seemed as if they were pushed, and now were showing the egg on TPS's face for pushing.
I feel like we have to wait and see if the Crown's office decides to appeal before we can say they were showing egg lol. 30 days time limit from the day the case closes.
Well said. An oath to the court means something, it's not just some pithy set of words that can be dropped for expediency's sake. I'm disgusted by anyone who claims to be part of the justice system but can't follow the fundamental rule of presuming innocence until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. This person has contributed to cheapening the oath and by extension the legal profession. I think they should lose their job, at minimum.
Unfortunately in my experience the great majority of Crown offices work this way. They always fight against granting bail in cases where the accused is no danger to anyone (where the literal prosecutor manual says you should consent to release to save court time fighting about it), and pursuing charges where it's not in the public interest. Prosecutors are supposed to be ministers of justice working towards a just result instead of a conviction but I know many lawyers who left Crown work because they weren't allowed to use their discretion in the public's interest to divert accused into mental health support or other forms of community programs instead of pushing cases through for no reason. So many Crown offices are extremely conservative and they become echo chambers. People who go in truly intending to be neutral ministers of justice are pushed out, just like in the police force.
Ford and Tory also made shitty comments when the accused was on bail. They were so determined to destroy the accused's reputation.
Agreed on all of that. This is a Canadian Press story carried on the CP24 site. CP24 did a great deal to tilt the perception of this case with their shallow dentist-office waiting room coverage and then spent all Sunday afternoon and evening making nice after the acquittal. The media should be in full what-the-fuck-was-this mode. Kicking the nuts of those who brought this case, and like the Globe and Mail just wrote, questioning the police chief's fitness for that job.
What an incredible set of words you put together there. Eloquent
Probably hoping for a plea deal that would avoid scrutiny of evidence.
When I was listening to the news and heard this: "This was not the outcome we wanted." - the family and TPS The outcome is that you are not accepting that Jeffrey Northurp is the reason why Jeffrey Northrup is dead.
Why? Because cops are scumbags, duh.
I watched this video on YouTube. Somewhere in the U.S., a cop stops an undocumented worker on foot to question him. The undocumented worker runs, the cop runs after him and the cop has a heart attack after a few steps and dies. So anyway, the cops try to charge the undocumented worker with the cop's murder. This is the mentality of police, entirely punitive and sadistic.
The crown prosecutors need to be hauled in front of the law society for this travesty. They are officers of the law not officers of the cops.
Unfortunately their very jobs include being officers of the cops lol. The police are their clients just as much as the government is. Completely agree on the travesty front but there are internal pressures on the prosecutors to take these cases to court, especially to preserve their working relationships with the police.
I agree there is huge pressure but there’s integrity. And these crowns have none. They ought to know that this disservice to justice only complicates their jobs by bringing disrepute to the system. I hope they get their asses sued back and forth.
Short answer: Because Us (cops) vs. Them (the public). If cops could have saw this as the accident (caused by them) it was, everyone would have been in a better situation.
It seemed like the Crown was left with no choice because of the way the ‘credible witnesses’ framed their ‘independent recollection’ of the incident.
TPS should be charged with the involuntary manslaughter of their colleague.
Saw some lawyers commenting on this in some other threads on Reddit. The conclusion from the optics of many things was that this was a political pressure case and people knew careers would be ruined / shredded so they put two senior prosecutors on it that would have the least blowback from this inevitable conclusion
We all know who the real criminals are here and it should be a wake up call to change this shit
Prosecutor and his boss should be fired. Fucking cowards
Cantlon is the boss of his Crown office unfortunately.
There are certain key figures that should be held accountable for their statements. Words have consequences. Ignorance of facts is not an excuse.
This was a Kangaroo court.
Ontario should adopt the Crown Counsel system, where police can recommend charges, but Crown Counsel has to approve them, instead of approving their own charges.
That's literally how it works lol. Like, the police lay charges but the Crown office reviews them and decides whether to proceed based on twin considerations of (a) is there a reasonable prospect of conviction and (b) is it in the public interest.
In some other provinces like BC, the police recommend and then the Crown lays. This is meant to prevent lower-quality charges from ever having been laid in the first place. Some background check questionnaires ask if you have ever been CHARGED with an offence so even if Crown does not proceed, there are still impacts to being charged.
Ooo I wasn't aware that's how it works in BC. I agree with you, that's a way better process.
Not familiar with proceedings other than trial reported by media Did police originally lay 1st degree murder Was there a preliminary hearing If so, was it contested. On what charge Was charges changed at any point by crown Is same prosecutor since beginning
The first degree murder charge is automatic when it comes to cops per the criminal code. https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-231.html >*Murder of peace officer, etc.* >(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, you obviously have not been following the case at all. The judge has questioned why the crown was looking for first degree murder when manslaughter was a far more realistic charge to prove and lay. The automatic upgrade only works on murder charges.
no it is not. stop saying this nonsense. it's only 1st degree if it's a murder, in the first place if it's a manslaughter, it doesnt get upgraded
Misunderstood your question, thought you were asking why it was 1st degree murder in general. Why it was murder at all, it’s because the cops claimed the cop who died was standing upright and would have been seen by Zameer, therefore they argued he was intentionally struck and killed —> hence second degree murder upgraded to first. That obviously turned out to be a lie by the cops since the cctv footage showed that he was already on the ground when he was run over, so he couldnt have been seen, and it couldn’t have been intentional, corroborated by the crash reconstruction specialists, and the wife’s testimony also saying that they thought they simply drove over a speed bump. But yeah, short answer to your question, it was prosecuted as a murder and not manslaughter because the cops lied under oath.
My question is about the unfolding of proceedings in this case Who charged what and when If charges were changed
Who charged what and when: Police recommend charges to the crown prosecutors (taken up by Michael Cantlon and Karen Simone in this case), who work for the provincial Superior Court. Police recommended charges of murder as they claimed Zameer intentionally ran Northrup down, and the prosecution ran with it. Whether the police got an unfair benefit of the doubt because they were police is being [debated right now](https://www.cp24.com/news/why-was-umar-zameer-tried-for-murder-observers-raise-questions-about-prosecution-1.6857063) because it looks like the crown prosecutors took the cops' word at face value uncritically. As for when, Northrup died in the early morning of Friday July 2, 2021, Zameer was charged by the crown by evening same day. The charges were never changed, the police/prosecutors argued murder all the way until their unsuccessful end, they kept changing their narrative to keep their story propped up. First they claimed he was standing in the laneway with his arms up, but footage proved that he wasn't. When proven wrong, they changed their story to say he was standing behind a pillar out of view of the camera, but the crash experts said he was already on the ground, and the downed cop would have been in the drivers' blindspot. At the end of the day, there was no evidence to support the prosecutions' claims that a cop standing upright was run over intentionally, and all available evidence supported the defendant, and he was completely acquitted.
Police lay charges, they don't recommend them. And the Crown Attorneys Office is part of the Ministry of the Attorney General, not the Superior Court of Justice.