Pubdate: Thu, 06 Sep 2001
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2001 Southam Inc.
Contact:  http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: Christie Blatchford
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/corrupt.htm (Corruption)

COURT ASKED TO END CASE AGAINST DRUG OFFICERS

Accused Of Theft, Fraud: Defence Lawyers Allege Evidence Was Held Back

An Ontario court is being asked to drop charges against five Toronto 
Police officers because Crown attorneys failed to make timely 
disclosure of evidence that might have exonorated them.

Five defence lawyers who represent the accused officers made the 
allegation in a motion filed yesterday.

The officers are among 13 former members of the force's beleagured 
drug squad facing a slew of theft and fraud-related charges in 
connection with an internal affairs investigation into the "fink 
fund," from which plainclothes police pay confidential informants.

The five are charged with 193 criminal offences in connection with 
the alleged misappropriation of $4,940 in 20 separate transactions 
with eight informants over the course of five years.

In court documents, lawyers Gary Clewley, Dan Kirby, Peter Dotsikas, 
Robert McGee and Leslie Pringle allege that three months after the 
five were first arrested in April last year, the chief complainant 
against them -- a man known as No. 186, as all informants are known 
by number -- recanted and had his physician send a letter to 
prosecutors to this effect on his behalf.

In this letter, as the National Post revealed this week in a story 
about the investigation that is now in its third calendar year, the 
doctor said No. 186 had severe memory problems caused by a head 
injury and numerous medications he was taking.

As a result, the doctor said in the letter, what No. 186 told 
investigating detectives from internal affairs "was not true."

Since the allegations from No. 186 comprise the sole charges against 
three of the five officers and account for about half of those 
against the remaining two, the letter of recantation was significant, 
and arguably meant there was virtually now no evidence against them.

Prosecutors are obliged to disclose to defence lawyers the case 
against their clients in a timely way.

But what happened in this case, the five lawyers allege, is that 
prosecutors quietly held on to the letter for six months, long after 
police had interviewed the doctor and confirmed it was authentic and 
after prosecutors are alleged to have suggested, before a judge, it 
didn't exist.

After a copy was sent to defence counsel in December last year, the 
lawyers promptly turned it over to the Crown and demanded to know why 
they hadn't been told of its existence.

Instead, the defence lawyers allege in the documents, prosecutors 
called in the Ontario Provincial Police to investigate who had 
created the letter and how the defence had come into possession of a 
copy. That investigation, the lawyers say, "cleared everyone" of any 
wrongdoing -- but the defence learned this only in June this year, a 
full year after prosecutors first received the letter.

As evidence that prosecutors have developed "tunnel vision" about the 
accused officers' guilt, the lawyers point to their "continued 
insistence that [the accused officers] and their counsel were 
responsible for the creation of the letter ..." and their continued 
reliance upon a discredited witness.

The five accused officers -- Gary Corbett, Rod Lawrence, Wayne Frye, 
Gordon Ramsay and Rick Franklin -- have been reassigned from active 
duty since their arrest.
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