Tarnished badges in Canada
Michael Newton
Witty's lawyer opts to call no evidence
By Linda Richardson, The Sault Star
(Published Nov. 16)In a surprise move Thursday, Doug Witty's lawyer decided
not to call evidence in the city police officer's sexual assault trial.
Just seconds after jurors filed into the Sault Ste. Marie courtroom, Harry
Black announced that he had changed his mind about calling evidence. The
eight-man, four-woman jury had been told Wednesday the accused would
testify Thursday when the defence opened its case.
However, Black said after reviewing all the notes he had taken during three
days of testimony from eight Crown witnesses ``I have decided the defence
will call no evidence.'' Witty, a 30-year-old constable with the Sault Ste.
Marie Police Service, has pleaded not guilty to the charge. Superior Court
Justice Gladys Pardu adjourned the case until this morning, when the
lawyers were slated to deliver their closing arguments.
Once prosecutor Shawn Porter and the defence completed their submissions,
the judge said, she would give her instructions to the jurors, who would
then begin their deliberations. The rape charge stems from an alleged May
30, 1999, incident that jurors were told occurred in Witty's basement after
an evening of drinking and bar-hopping in the Michigan Sault. The
26-year-old complainant said she had been sleeping in her clothes on a
couch when she was awakened by someone fondling her. The woman, who can't
be identified by court order, said she never opened her eyes and pretended
to be asleep during the assault, which involved vaginal and anal
intercourse. She said she knew her assailant was Witty after touching his
hair. She insisted that at one point she had said ``No.'' Following the
assault, she said ``It kept going through my head, he's going to blow my
head off. He's a cop and he has a gun. I have to get out.''
A sexual assault nurse who examined the complainant about 3 p.m. later that
day said she was ``very tearful, seemed very traumatized, shaking, totally
upset.'' In evidence read into court Wednesday, prosecutor Shawn Porter
said forensic analysis indicated semen found on the woman's T-shirt matched
Witty's DNA profile.
'POPULAR' COP CHARGED; ASSAULT, EX GIRLFRIEND
Halifax Daily News
Southam News
A popular Sydney police officer has been suspended from the force after
being charged with assault last week. Const. Brad Burke - the community
officer and media liaison for the Cape Breton Regional Police Service - was
charged with common assault last Friday, after an alleged dispute involving
an ex-girlfriend. Regional police officers arrested Burke at their central
division offices, while he was off duty, said Insp. Bob McLean, who had
already been acting as the 177-member force's spokesman while Burke was on
vacation. McLean said regional police scrutinized the complaint and felt
there was enough evidence to proceed with charges against their colleague,
who appeared before a provincial justice earlier this week. Burke was
suspended with pay pending the outcome of the investigation, McLean said
yesterday.
Halifax police investigating
Halifax Regional Police are conducting the investigation. Two detectives
with the mainland force conducted interviews Sunday before leaving
Wednesday. McLean said the results of the investigation are expected today.
Burke, a 13-year veteran of the municipal force and single father of three
children, has been the face of the regional police service since accepting
the community relations post in July 2000.
One of 32 officers profiled in a set of regional police trading cards,
Burke's personal interests read like a laundry list of volunteer
activities, including Big Brothers and Big Sisters, Boy Scouts, Brownies
and Safe Grad.
Michael Newton
By LINDA RICHARDSON, The Sault Star
(published Nov. 17)A Sault Ste. Marie city police officer was convicted
Friday of sexually assaulting a woman who was sleeping in the basement of
his home after an evening of drinking. A jury of eight men and four women
found Doug Witty guilty after three-and-a-half hours of deliberation.
Superior Court Justice Gladys Pardu will set a date for sentencing Witty,
who is not in custody, on Dec. 12. Sexual assault carries a maximum prison
sentence of 10 years. The 30-year-old constable showed no emotion as the
verdict was delivered. But later, after the judge and jury had left the
courtroom, he wept as he was comforted by fellow police officers. Neither
prosecutor Shawn Porter nor defence counsel Harry Black would comment
following the decision. Black also refused to say if the case will be
appealed. A six-year-member of the Sault Ste. Marie Police Service, Witty
has been suspended with pay since he was charged in September 1999.
Chief Bob Davies said the officer remains suspended until discreditable
conduct charges are dealt with under the Police Act. This likely won't
occur until other criminal charges _ two counts of sexual assault involving
two other women _ are completed in court, he said Friday night. A trial
date for these two counts will be set in January. The 26-year-old
complainant, who was on the witness stand for a day and a half, was not in
court to hear the jury's decision. She testified that she had been raped by
Witty after a group of friends that included Witty's now ex-wife and
another police officer had been drinking and bar-hopping in the Michigan
Sault.
The assault occurred in the early morning hours of May 30, 1999 when she
was sleeping on a couch in the basement of Witty's home. Jurors heard the
evening had been peppered with sexual banter and joking _ talk that was
described as common among the group of friends. In his closing argument
Friday morning, the prosecutor said there was no question Witty had sexual
contact with the complainant. The issue was whether it occurred without her
consent. ``Doug Witty got out of bed after unsuccessfully trying to have
sex with his wife. He went downstairs and whether out of sexual desire,
anger or distress, he walked down those stairs and sexually assaulted her
and
he knew she wasn't consenting.''
Porter said the woman didn't want the sex acts to take place and didn't
consent. ``There's no yes here.'' The sexual comments the complainant had
admitted making during the bantering was ``not an open invitation,'' he
said. ``We're not here to judge lifestyle, to approve of what they did,''
Porter said. ``The point is they did talk like this. They talked like this
all the time.''
Jurors also heard other evidence that she didn't consent, he said, pointing
to the testimony of witnesses who described the woman as upset, disheveled
and frightened after she had returned home. ``This wasn't an Oscar-winning
performance,``The 26-year-old complainant, who was on the witness stand for
a day and a half, was not in court to hear the jury's decision. She
testified that she had been raped by Witty after a group of friends that
included Witty's now ex-wife and another police officer had been drinking
and bar-hopping in the Michigan Sault. The assault occurred in the early
morning hours of May 30, 1999 when she was sleeping on a couch in the
basement of Witty's home. Jurors heard the evening had been peppered with
sexual banter and joking _ talk that was described as common among the
group of friends. In his closing argument Friday morning, the prosecutor
said there was no question Witty had sexual contact with the complainant.
The issue was whether it occurred without her consent.
``Doug Witty got out of bed after unsuccessfully trying to have sex with
his wife. He went downstairs and whether out of sexual desire, anger or
distress, he walked down those stairs and sexually assaulted her and he
knew she wasn't consenting.'' Porter said the woman didn't want the sex
acts to take place and didn't consent. ``There's no yes here.'' The sexual
comments the complainant had admitted making during the bantering was ``not
an open invitation,'' he said. ``We're not here to judge lifestyle, to
approve of what they did,'' Porter said. ``The point is they did talk like
this. They talked like this all the time.'' Evidence about the woman's
physical condition recorded during a hospital examination later that day
confirms something happened, and supports the reliability, credibility and
truth of what the complainant said, the Crown argued.
Jurors also heard other evidence that she didn't consent, he said, pointing
to the testimony of witnesses who described the woman as upset, disheveled
and frightened after she had returned home. ``This wasn't an Oscar-winning
performance,'' he said. ``This is what happened and it was not consensual
sex.'' At the beginning of his closing argument, Black reminded jurors an
accused isn't required to take the stand
and that the burden of proof lies with the prosecution. He said he had
decided it wasn't necessary to have his client testify because
cross-examination of Crown witnesses had shown just how weak the case
against Witty was and had elicited favorable evidence. ``Defence evidence
came out through the mouths of prosecution witnesses.''
Black attacked the complainant's credibility and told jurors she had lied
on the witness stand when she said she had uttered the word no. Semen
(which matched Witty's DNA and was found on the woman's T-shirt) and a torn
skirt say nothing about consent, the defence lawyer said. ``This is two
drunken people fumbling in the dark on a couch.'' In his hard-hitting
attack on the complainant, Black questioned if she even was asleep when the
incident first began. ``Even if she had been asleep wasn't there an open
invitation that had been repeated and repeated and repeated all night
long.''
The complainant had a ``huge lapse of judgement'' and in an intoxicated
state had engaged in consensual sex with a friend's husband .
``She was horrified embarrassed and full of regret,'' Black said, arguing
the woman's later emotional state wasn't confirmation of an assault. He
argued that the Crown had failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that
she didn't consent. ``Her story
is full of inconsistencies.'' The complainant was the prosecution's main
witness, ``the star of the show,'' Black said. But she was unreliable and
untruthful, which ``discredits the Crown's case. You have to throw it
out.'' ``You can't allow a man to be convicted on the basis of the
evidence you heard this week,'' he concluded.
Michael Newton
Toronto Star
Officer asset to OPP, hearing told
Peter Edwards
Staff Reporter
LONDON, Ont. - Kenneth Deane of the Ontario Provincial Police hasn't lost a
day's pay since he shot native protester Anthony (Dudley) George to death
more than six years ago. Instead, the acting sergeant has risen since then
to become the force's top bomb
and anti-terrorist weapons expert, despite a conviction for criminal
negligence causing death in George's shooting. So why is the OPP only now
seeking to kick him off the force, Deane's lawyer, Ian Roland, asked Loyall
Cann, adjudicator of a Police Services Act hearing and the woman who will
determine Deane's professional fate.
"He has actually enhanced significantly the reputation of the OPP," Roland
argued.
Roland noted many political commentators blame the provincial government
for the bloodshed at Ipperwash. "Acting Sergeant Deane didn't make the
decision for the OPP to be involved and cannot be held responsible for the
damage that flowed from the incident," Roland said. Instead of handing
Deane a "professional death sentence" of dismissal from the force, Cann
should levy "a serious and significant penalty," Roland argued.
But prosecutor Denise Dwyer argued that Deane must accept responsibility
for his actions. He fired seven shots from his submachine gun that night -
four toward other
native protesters and three at George. "At the end of the day, it was
Kenneth Deane who pulled the trigger," Dwyer said.
Dwyer noted Provincial Court Judge Fraser found in April, 1997 that Deane
knew George was unarmed when he opened fire, and that he and fellow
officers lied under oath.
Cann, a retired Toronto police deputy chief, said she hopes to reach her
decision
on Deane's future by the end of the year.
Thursday, November 22, 2001
Deane to learn fate by year's end
An accused OPP officer may be fired when the police
services board adjudicator rules.
By JENNIFER O'BRIEN, Free Press Reporter
The OPP officer who shot and killed an unarmed native protester in 1995
must be stripped of his badge to deter other officers -- and himself --
from committing similar crimes, a lawyer said yesterday. In closing
arguments at a police services board hearing to determine whether acting
Sgt. Kenneth Deane should be fired or reprimanded for killing Dudley
George, Crown counsel Denise Dwyer said the officer has never shown remorse
for his actions. "He is not (remorseful) because of a true-to-self belief .
. . he does not recognize he committed a criminal offence," Dwyer said at
the final day of the board hearing at Hilton London. "How do you get around
the fact that if he did not believe he used his weapon wrongly that day, he
may do so again?" she asked adjudicator Loyall Cann. Deane and other OPP
officers confronted native protesters occupying Ipperwash Provincial Park
on Sept. 6, 1995. He was convicted in 1997 of criminal negligence causing
death for shooting George and sentenced to two
years less a day, to be served in the community.
The Supreme Court upheld the ruling and Deane has since pleaded guilty to a
charge of discreditable conduct under the Police Services Act. Yesterday,
after lawyers made their final submissions, Cann adjourned the hearing and
said she hoped to have a decision by year's end. Outside the hearing room,
Dudley George's brother, Pierre, said he still prays Deane will be fired.
"When he signed up to be a police officer, he signed up to uphold the law
and protect people," George said. "But he was convicted of criminal
negligence causing death . . . he broke his contract with the OPP. He
should be fired."
At trial, defence lawyer Ian Roland painted Deane as an exemplary officer.
But Dwyer argued the enormity and seriousness of the offence far outweighed
Deane's otherwise excellent service history. But Roland argued Deane is an
asset who "enhances the reputation of the OPP," and the force knows it --
or it would have suspended him years ago. "The (OPP's) actions speak louder
than its words and what it is trying to do
here today," Roland said while his client, looking tired and dressed in a
dark suit, stared straight ahead. After the hearing, Roland called the
provincial police force's submissions confusing. "It's crazy, that they
gave him more responsibilities in the past six years and now this," he
said. "It's complete hypocrisy." Never once was Deane suspended for his
actions at Ipperwash that fateful night, Roland said.
Deane has been the explosives disposal unit co-ordinator for the OPP since
1997 and trains students at the Ontario Police College near Aylmer and
training academies in Orillia and Ottawa. He is also the OPP's leading
expert in biological and nuclear warfare, Roland said. "It would not be in
public interest, in this day and age, to dismiss acting Sgt. Kenneth Deane,
given his knowledge and expertise in the area of nuclear and biological
weapons," said Roland.
During her argument, Dwyer outlined five cases in which police officers
were fired for misconduct -- none of which resulted in death. The incident
goes beyond the acts of one individual, though. In Toronto yesterday,
Premier Mike Harris began three days of testimony on the Ipperwash affair
in pretrial discovery for a lawsuit brought by Dudley George's family.
"But, at the end of the day, it is Ken Deane who pulled the trigger, Ken
Deane who caused the death . . . and who must be appropriately punished in
terms of his employment," said Dwyer.