The most widely read magazine for Canadian lawyers
Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/50815
would have a complete catalogue of his crimes. While contacted for this story, officials in the Crown law office of the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General declined to comment on the handling of the Williams case. "Normally when a plea of guilty is entered, it's to abridge matters," says Toronto criminal defence lawyer Marie Henein, who is president of The Advocates' Society. "It's not really clear to me why the Crown would have cho- sen to lead four days' worth of evidence, which ranged from detailed descrip- tions, to what was on videos, to the release of photographs and the confes- sion, so it was really a wide-ranging set of facts and that's a little unusual." Henein doesn't accept the argument that the evidence had to be admitted for future parole purposes. "You can file the videotapes if you wanted or a sum- mary under seal with simply highlights of it out of respect to the people that were subjected to this. You could have done it in a variety of different ways that ensured that the record was com- plete but that it wasn't splashed on the front page of every paper." She questions the release of so much information, and its widespread dis- semination by the media. "What did we learn from the details?" she asks. "We learned what we always knew, which was that Russell Williams is an aberrant, disturbed person who committed things that were just horrendous and that left in his wake a lot of tragedy but that lesson we knew, we didn't need to see this." Among the evidence tendered was part of the 10.5-hour-long interroga- tion video of Williams, in which he confesses. Don Stuart, a professor at Queen's University's law school in Kingston, Ont., and a leading authority on criminal law and procedure, believes that was a public relations exercise. "In some respect, that was also completely irrelevant and that could have been pre- served without showing it," says Stuart. "People sit back and say that was a bril- liant interrogation, not really. They had the evidence already to inculpate him, so they got some rapport with him and tried to find out where his weak spot was and then confronted him with the ntitled-3 1 incriminating evidence and he coughed it all up." Stuart notes there was no lying or deception on the part of the police interrogator. "Under the rules of inter- rogation that we've got set up by the Supreme Court, police are encouraged to lie and talk about non-existing evi- dence and there's no right to counsel present or to be considered," he says. "Many of us are saying that the Charter of Rights and judicial controls on police interrogation are woefully weak in Canada so in that respect it was a PR job because it sort of depicted that all police interrogations are as civilized as that, they're not." Burgess read a 95-page statement of facts into the record that included a description of all 88 crimes. The descriptions included a summary of what is seen and heard during the two Practice Management LexisNexis® PCLaw® Accounting software that SPEAKS LEGALESE. PCLaw® billing and accounting software combines what you need to track your time and money all in one system — from time and billing to trust accounting, cheque writing, financial statements, client identification and verification, automatic backup, offline file management, advanced reporting tools and more. Best of all, it's easy to use and ready to go to work instantly. Download and Try PCLaw for FREE* For more information, call 1-800-328-2898 or visit www.lexisnexis.ca/pclaw. * Download PCLaw free for 30 days. Certain conditions apply. LexisNexis and the Knowledge Burst logo are registered trademarks of Reed Elsevier Properties Inc., used under licence. PCLaw is a registered trademark of LexisNexis Practice Management Systems Inc. © 2011 LexisNexis Canada Inc. All rights reserved. www.CANADIAN Lawyermag.com JAN UARY 2011 29 12/9/10 4:12:40 PM