Excessive speeding allegations got three Prince George police officers charged, but excessive court delays got them all off without a trial.
Provincial court judge (now on the Supreme Court) Ron Tindale gave them a judicial stay of proceedings, directing the reason for the delays chiefly on the RCMP.
It was alleged by two North District RCMP traffic members that three men on motorcycles - Phillipe Joseph Charron (born 1981), Martin Michael Degin (born 1978), Lane Ellery Tobin (born 1983) - were travelling at speeds more than 40 kms higher than the posted limit. They were pulled over around the intersection of McBride Timber Road and Highway 16 on May 15, 2009. It was made immediately known that they were off-duty RCMP officers from the Prince George detachment.
The three chose to contest the Motor Vehicle Act allegations, but RCMP and Crown pushed for a conviction. Twenty-seven months later Tindale called a halt to the proceedings. Other traffic violation cases in B.C. had already been thrown out by judges after far less time.
"Clearly there are limitations on institutional resources in Prince George, that is obvious from the fact that there has been a seven-month delay to obtain a first trial date, once the disclosure issue was resolved.
"This, however, is not the main reason for the delay. In my view it is the manner in which the police conducted themselves with regard to the disclosure requests and their initial actions when they were prosecuting this matter before Crown counsel became involved that caused significant delay in this case."
More than 20 different court appearances were required to get the case to the doorstep of an actual trial. A six-month delay between May and November, 2010 was the first major stumbling block. It was a time gap initiated by defense asking for information to be disclosed over and above the information that formed the basis for the charges. That information was presented by Crown and RCMP as of February, in keeping with usual timelines.
Both RCMP officials and B.C. Crown counsel officials were interviewed by The Citizen on this matter, and both stressed a need to communicate carefully, due to legal constraints between their branches of justice and judges. However, both Insp. Eric Brewer and Crown spokesman Neil MacKenzie insisted the initial charge package contained all the information typically involved in court cases over speeding. What the three alleged speeders then asked for was both unusual and excessive compared to norms.
"The investigation that was done was thorough, it was complete, and was done no differently than had it been anyone else [accused]," Brewer said. "We stand by the case we presented to Crown. I have never experienced being asked to provide the kind of information we were asked to provide, but we did provide all that was asked for."
"The Crown did not feel all the materials were relevant that the defense was asking for," MacKenzie added. "Defense applied for disclosure of material that wouldn't normally be involved in a case of a Motor Vehicle Act infraction, but the judge felt it should have been disclosed."
The case was one year and one week old when defense requested the new materials. It took more than 10 months for that issue to be argued out to the point of Tindale deciding the materials should be gathered and provided to the defense side. That order was made on March 15, 2011.
Three weeks later, defense applied for the case to be thrown out due to all the time it had taken. It took five more months to schedule a hearing on this matter and then another week for Tindale to come up with a decision. It was Sept. 15 when he made the ruling setting the three Mounties free, only four weeks shy of when the trial was scheduled to be held.
Crown contended that, were it not for the request for the contentious materials, they were ready for trial as of May 21, 2010. Even when all the wrangling over the disclosure issue was finished, they couldn't book a courtroom for seven more months.
"The position the Crown took was we opposed the application for a judicial stay of proceedings," said MacKenzie. "We thought it should proceed to the hearing. Crown felt it was not the right remedy for this issue on the whole. We obviously respect the decision the courts reached and concluded there was no basis for an appeal."
The window of eligibility is now closed for appealing the matter.
WHAT DEFENSE WAS ASKING FOR...
Judge Ron Tindale's report on the stay of proceedings gave this explanation about what the defense lawyers were asking for, over and above all the usual documentation for a traffic infraction. Crown protested the need for gathering it all up for a trio of speeding tickets.
Tindale, who sided with defense, wrote:
The application for disclosure had a number of categories of documents which the accused were seeking from the Crown, which were as follows:
i)All information records regarding the consideration by the RCMP of pursuing criminal charges against the accused.
ii)All information records regarding the Crown's response to Corporal Graham's May22nd, 2009 report.
iii)All information records regarding communications between the RCMP and Crown counsel regarding the consideration of Criminal Code charges.
iv)All information records relating to the decision that the RCMP would retain conduct of the prosecution, and all information records relating to the communications between Inspector Brewer, Sergeant McTiernan, and any other members of the RCMP with representatives from the Superintendent of Motor Vehicles, the office of the Superintendent of Motor Vehicles, and the civil forfeiture unit of the provincial government.
