Your honour, we respectfully submit that it was in fact you and the court system itself that caused three off-duty RCMP members to walk away untried for excessive speeding, not RCMP management and Crown as you suggest in your reasons for judgment on the matter.
The proceedings were overseen by provincial court judge Ron Tindale, a longstanding and respected legal counsel in Prince George who was deservedly promoted this week to sit on the B.C. Supreme Court bench. On this matter, however, we must respectfully cock an eyebrow.
The RCMP attempted to charge three off-duty members with allegedly screaming down Highway 16 on motorcycles in May 2009 at speeds more than 40 km/h faster than the posted limit. It was a hard case for the public to stomach because it led the imagination to thoughts of those who enforce the laws acting like they were above it themselves, of officers who usually hear excuses from unrepentant drivers now being the ones whining, and of people who attend to human highway wreckage now disrespecting the victims of
aggressive driving.
With no trial ever going to happen, we can not say these three RCMP members were guilty of speeding on their motorcycles that day, but they are absolutely guilty of riding the legal brakes until they smoked the case right out of court.
They were helped by the judicial system being so underfunded in all areas that it takes eons to book a hearing about a hearing. This particular case was tossed out for taking too long - 27 months.
Tindale specifically blamed the RCMP for not being forthcoming with all the information requested by defense lawyers, thus causing the whole thing to drag on. We retort that defense lawyers were given a free pass to delve down to ridiculous depths of dithering, and it worked.
Being Mounties was not going to get them special immunity from their peers on highway patrol, nor was it going to stand in their way of arguing their side of the case. Both sides put together a comprehensive package of all the usual materials in a speeding case, and that was disclosed from the start (courtroom rules insist both sides must show each other all their information).
At long last - a full year into the whole affair - we found out that wasn't good enough for the defense. They wanted records above and beyond the usual stuff needed to fight a speeding allegation. Crown and police said no, this material had nothing to do with the case. This argument went back and forth in front of
Tindale for approximately 10 months.
It wasn't just any common files they were after. They demanded: all records regarding the RCMP's decision to pursue charges, all information pertaining to the writing of a police report on the matter (not just the report itself), all records of any communication between police and Crown on the matter, all communications between the senior Mounties who decided to go ahead with charges, plus all record of communication with the office of the Superintendent of Motor Vehicles and the civil forfeiture unit of the provincial government.
What does any of that have to do with the rate of speed of any motorcycle on any road? The request for this information looks to be a cheap tactic to tie the proceedings up in red tape, not challenge the validity of the
allegations.
We contend that this was bald-faced stalling and made a mockery of the whole judicial system - and it was allowed to prevail. Tindale didn't put that in its proper place, and in fact became ringmaster of this circus.
Tindale must also have known, as he wrote his final ruling dismissing the charges, that when he singled the RCMP out for blame they were duty-bound to say nothing in their own defense. As members of the judiciary, they cannot speak against a judge's decision, nor can Crown. Their tongues were tied.
The only way to truly spot the turning points in this case would be to analyze the transcripts and other records of these proceedings. There were more than 20 courtroom appearances over the 27 months. It would take an ungodly amount of time and a suitcase full of money for the average citizen to obtain these records, so perhaps the public should make the case that we have not had a full examination into exactly why, as demonstrated by this matter, our court system is so bloated with dysfunction that it took more than two years to arrive at nothing, on a simple (but not unimportant) speeding case. How do you apply for that kind of disclosure?
-- Prince George Citizen
