Sunday, June 28, 2009
Constable Ma said to Corporal Mar
This is not funny. This may be comedic, satirical, but not funny. Excerpt from Oral Reasons for Judgment in Chambers, November 14, 2006 [Click HERE to see full document]:
[9] An information was laid in the B.C. Rail case in December 2004. Requests for disclosure were made by defence immediately. Apparently no disclosure was made when the charges were laid. The defence has characterized this as a “black cloud” that hung over the whole process. I do not find that it was a black cloud, given that it is not unusual that disclosure is not available the instant charges are laid.
[10] Disclosure commenced on January 20, 2005. A direct Indictment was filed on January 28, 2005, bringing the matter immediately to this Court without a preliminary inquiry in the Provincial Court.
[11] On March 10, 2005, a day prior to an appearance in this Court, 11,000 documents were disclosed. The disclosure is being provided electronically.
[12] In the appearance before Associate Chief Justice Dohm on March 11, 2005, the Crown advised the Court that the disclosure was substantially completed and final disclosure would be complete in two to three weeks.
[13] A trial date was fixed, at the urging of the Associate Chief Justice, for November 28, 2005. It was clear, shortly after that date was fixed, that disclosure was going to be an issue. There was no index for the 11,000 documents which had been produced. The software provided at the time did not have a proper search function. Apparently that issue has now been solved.
[14] Due to the diligence on the part of defence counsel in reviewing what was disclosed, Mr. McCullough discovered a number of documents missing from the disclosure package. These are listed in the many letters he sent to the Crown outlining his concerns regarding the disclosure process, and reference may be made to documents at tabs 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20.
[15] The defence is concerned that the Crown is not sufficiently involved in the disclosure process and has left the bulk of the disclosure to the police. This is supported in the affidavit of Corporal Mar wherein she states the procedure she and Constable Ma have followed to conduct disclosure. That is not to say that the Crown has not been actively involved. They have been. Further, it is not to say that the police should not be actively involved; needless to say, they must be. However, the state of the document disclosure suggests that at least initially the disclosure was being primarily performed by the police.
Many paragraphs later, the Honourable Justice concludes: "No need to cross-examine Constable Ma or Corporal Mar."
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Special thanks to North Van's Grumps for this link. He has provided more links in his comment following the Neal Hall posting below. - BC Mary.
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Q. If you were The Honourable Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett, would you (a) choose to continue presiding over the BC Rail trial to the end? Or would you (b) choose to step up immediately into the BC Court of Appeal for a fresh start?
My answer is a guess: that if she steps aside at this point, it's a devastating indication of the flim-flammery of this tragic trial. If she decides to stay on as judge, I'll take that as a sign that somebody with integrity is willing to act in the public interest ... slow, indifferent, uber-tolerant as the process has been so far.
On Tuesday, June 30, 2009, in BC Supreme Court (Vancouver), in another pre-trial hearing for Basi Virk, we may hear her own answer to that question. - BC Mary.
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An interesting column about the duties and accountability of judges in Vancouver Sun - June 29, 2009: Lots of people make mistakes at work, but judges are rarely subjected to disciplinary measures no matter what the cost of their errors.
Read it HERE.
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An interesting comment made this morning, privately:
Is it the judge's jurisdiction to order charges for breaking the Records Act? WILFULLY breaking it? Seems like it should be the A-G or Crown Prosecutor, but I still don't get what the prescribed sentence would be....
The only remedies here may be post-facto, i .e. in terms of written history critical of what went down, it may be impossible to be preventive because of the cooptive nature of the entire political/policing/judicial process...
HOWEVER if collusion, conspiracy etc are ever proven, the whole contract could be revoked, even if the transfers have already taken place; unless that's exempted in the contract; in which case it's an illegal contract, which might be one of the reasons it's being kept secret, and why the Competition Bureau doesn't want to touch it...it's not like all this HASN'T been being discussed in Ottawa....
Between the nonsense about the deleted emails being unrecoverable (I'm sure they are, if someone really went at it right) and the Bill Gates linkage and the context of CN entering into a secret/fradulent contract with the BC government aimed at getting control of lands subject to aboriginal claims, I' ve been trying to figure what to say to Wired Magazine, or even just what to circulate on the many anti-Microsoft/anti-Gates blogs out there....hitting at CN may be easier than hitting at the BC govt.....and may help enlist the technical know-how to completely undo the claim the emails are unrecoverable; even if "illegally" recovered by a hacker, their contents could prove explosive....why else, after all, would they have been deleted?
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But the first thing that struck me as really, really odd, but stated like other things here with a nonchalance that belies the import:
"[4] The Crown objects to the attendance of defence counsel in the Project Room primarily on the basis of security. No evidence was filed in relation to the security of the Project Room other than the fact that the original documents are not vetted. I add that all counsel in this case are using the word "vet" to describe the process of editing."
"Vetting" is being given a generous interpretation here, I fear....later on some points argue in favour of access, and then are used as reasons to not allow access.
It seems to me that the police had too much control in deciding which evidence could be seen, and is suggestive that only evidence pertaining to the charges they laid was made available (and incompletely at that, as we have learned). And that the Crown has not been impartial in its control over the evidence, even though it's supposed to make available all material, "whether inculpatory or exculpatory".
All this happened while these proceedings were still under a publication ban, right? Not that the major papers have legal reporters who'd have had the teeth to get all over this.....
Really does make you wonder about what else is in the reams of material doesn't it? And what else, like the wiretap affidavit signed in the airport hanger, is tucked away in the wrong places.
TWO police were put in charge of all this material, only two. And apparently they did very sloppy work, though "sloppy" presumes innocent motives and impartiality, which given all else we can't be taken without a grain of salt.
The stench of impropriety coming off this case is harder and harder to take. We're so conditioned to hearing injustice delivered in reasonable language that it's hard to know when their arguments make sense, and when they don't.
I don't think these do. I'm not a lawyer, but I do know common sense when I see it, and especially when I don't.
: June 28, 2009 at 8:50 a.m. To avoid long hours of researching the court appearance that Basi and company have been attending, here's a source of the complete listing.
http://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/search_judgments.aspx#SearchTitle
Option One:
At "Case Name" type in R. v Basi
Option Two:
At "Case Name" type in R. v. Virk, Basi and Basi ----to discover why the BC Rail case needs to go to the Supreme Court of Canada
Option Three:
At "Case Name" type in BC Rail
Option Four:
At "Keyword" type any name/company
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The one I have been reading tonight goes a long way to explain why the disclosures have been coming to light in dribs and drabs....RCMP.
http://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/Jdb-txt/SC/06/20/2006BCSC2086.htm
June 27, 2009 10:50 PM
http://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/jdb-txt/sc/07/09/2007bcsc0938.htm
The Plaintiff is Lulu Island Holdings Ltd., the Defendant being the Greater Vancouver Sewerage and Drainage Disttict (GVSDD) brought about by, and under, the Expropriation Act of BC.
"The Evidence
[7] The parties do not dispute the facts. Mr. Ron Marr, a land development manager for the Progressive Group of companies, testified for the plaintiff. Mr. Milan Ilich is the founder and sole owner of the Progressive Group of companies...." SNIP
Milan Ilich??????
Isn't Patrick Kinsella the owner of the Progressive Group?
Kinsella is listed everywhere as president of Progressive Holdings and chairman of the Progressive Group.
Milan Illich was the top individual donor to the BC Liberals:
"And leading the way among individual donors to the Liberals was Richmond developer Milan Illich, who personally donated $233,000. His various companies chipped in another $18,750."
: June 28, 2009 at 2:04 p.m. : June 29, 2009 at 5:02 p.m. << Home
