The Criminal Justice Branch is appealing a ruling by the Supreme Court of British Columbia upholding the decision of the Commissioner of the Frank Paul Inquiry that found that prosecutors and former prosecutors do not enjoy immunity from explaining why no charges were laid in connection with the death of Frank Paul.

Mr. Paul, a 48 year old homeless Aboriginal man, died of hypothermia in December 1998 after a Vancouver police officer left him in an isolated commercial alleyway. No coroner’s inquest was held, no charges were laid, and BC politicians refused to yield to public pressure to hold an inquiry into the matter until last year, when a public inquiry was finally initiated. Although the inquiry was mandated to consider the response of the Criminal Justice Branch to Mr. Paul’s death, the Branch refused to deliver documents or make its prosecutors available for questioning. No date has been set for the appeal.

News is coming in that yet another young man has died after being blasted by a police TASER. By my count, this latest fatality is the 355th TASER-related death in North America.

It is difficult to come to any conclusion but that a TASER is like a 50,000 volt lightning bolt: in the majority of cases the recipient experiences enormous shock and excruciating pain but sometimes, as with lightning, the victim’s heart stops and he can’t be revived.

It is unbelievable to me that this weapon was introduced to Canadian police without any public consultation or independent safety testing and that policy-makers continue to dither about whether to remove it from the police arsenal until adequate testing and research has been done. One thing is certain; as long as police use the weapon, more people will die.

Sara Lewis, the widow of Donald Dwayne Lewis, the 5’4″ , 139 pound unarmed man shot and killed by RCMP Cst. Cole Brewer at McLeese Lake in August, 2006, has to represent herself at the coroner’s inquest into her husband’s death after repeated requests for legal aid were turned down.

The inquest has been convened in Williams Lake, BC at considerable public expense. Taxpayers fund the coroner, the coroner’s lawyer, the sheriffs, the court reporter, two lawyers for the RCMP and the dozen or so RCMP members, including media liaison representatives from Vancouver, who have been in attendance at the inquest.

Mr. Lewis’ widow, however, is forced to try to grapple with complex legal issues of admissibility of evidence and proper questions for cross-examination as she tries to find out why her wounded husband bled to death after Cst. Brewer handcuffed him to a tree.

According to Attorney General Wally Oppal’s recent letter to me, “I have great sympathy for what your client has endured, and I respect her efforts to discover the facts surrounding her husband’s death in what must be difficult circumstances. However, the government provides funding for legal representation only in very limited circumstances…family participation at a public inquest does not meet this threshold.”

The inquest continues, as do the RCMP lawyers’ efforts to portray Don Lewis, who was simply camping on Crown land when he was accosted by police, as someone who somehow deserved to die.

Billy Bragg, the Bard of Barking, delivered a rousing sermon on the importance of keeping the faith and defeating the cynicism within to a capacity crowd at St. Andrews Wesley Church last night. He also played a fine selection of his politically charged and humorous tunes for the appreciative audience. Bill was in good form on this night, the first concert on his North American tour. Seattle tonight…

Dr. Pierre Savard, professor of biomedical engineering at Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, and the recipient of a PhD from MIT, presented the results of his study to the Braidwood Commission of Inquiry today. Dr. Savard has concluded that “heart disease increases the probability of death after Taser shocks” and “studies on healthy subjects or healthy animals are insufficient to conclude that the Taser is entirely safe.”

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One logical question is, how did a potentially unsafe and lethal product get into the hands of law enforcement in Canada without any public consultation, safety testing, independent research, guidelines or restrictions imposed on its use as a non-lethal or “less than lethal” intermediate police weapon?

Another is, why can’t this device be subject to CSA certification in the same way that electric fence controllers, electronic animal restraint devices, are?

For over three years, I have been imploring officials in this province (the Chief Coroner, the Police Complaint Commissioner, the Attorney General, the Solicitor General, the Deputy Commissioner of the RCMP, the Chief Constable of the Vancouver Police Department) to stop the use of TASERS until rigorous independent scientific testing has been done, to no avail.

The Braidwood Commission Inquiry continues in Vancouver…