BC Supreme Court Justice Gill has heard the Attorney General, Criminal Justice Branch’s motion to dismiss a Petition filed by the family of homicide victim Tammy Lynn Murray and is expected to render her decision on Monday, November 17, 2008.

Ms. Murray was brutally slain on September 19, 2007 by her domestic partner, Aaron Hickey, 19, who stabbed her dozens of times. Hickey was immediately charged with murder and made numerous court appearances over the next eight months. As Hickey’s preliminary hearing was about to commence, Ms. Murray’s family learned that Crown Counsel had concluded a plea agreement with Hickey’s defence counsel that would enable him to plead guilty to manslaughter instead of murder. The family had not been consulted about the possibility of a plea to the lesser offence and was outraged when they learned of it. They demanded an explanation and were told by Crown Counsel that Ms. Murray’s employment as an escort was a factor in the Crown’s decision to make the deal.

Michael McLeod filed a Petition in BC Supreme Court on October 7, 2008 and served Crown Counsel with the documents. On October 14, 2008, Hickey pleaded guilty to manslaughter and his sentencing hearing was put over to January, 2009.

An Amended Petition was filed on November 5, 2008: Petition To The Court

At today’s hearing, two lawyers representing the Ministry of Attorney General, Criminal Justice Branch applied to have the Amended Petition summarily dismissed on the basis that it discloses no reasonable claim, that it is unnecessary, scandalous, frivolous or vexatious and that it is an abuse of the process of the court.

Canada’s largest media congllomerate has sued a few local activists for allegedly producing a four-page parody criticizing The Vancouver Sun’s apparent media biases.

We are the solicitors for Carel Moiseiwitsch in CanWest Mediaworks Publications Inc. v. Horizon Publications Ltd., Garth Leddy, Mordecai Briemberg, Gordon Murray, Carel Moiseiwitsch, John Doe #2, John Doe #3, Jane Doe #2 and Jane Doe #3; Supreme Court of British Columbia Action No. S078309, Vancouver Registry.

Church & Company are the solicitors for CanWest, which started the lawsuit on December 7, 2007, alleging in its Amended Statement of Claim that “each of the defendants, has been involved, directly or indirectly, in anti-Isrqaeli and pro-Palestinian media activities.” We have responded, in part, with the following, at paragraph 10 of the Statement of Defence: “In answer to the whole of the Amended Statement of Claim, this Defendant says that the Plaintiff’s action is a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation intended to stifle or suppress the free expression of political opinion that is inconsistent with the Plaintiff’s political and editorial agenda of promoting the State of Israel within Canada.” No trial date has been set for the case.

For further information on this matter, please go to: seriouslyfreespeech.wordpress.com

The trial of a Cambie Street merchant’s civil claim for compensatory damages resulting from Canada Line construction disruption has been adjourned to March 16, 2008. The BC Supreme Court trial, which was to have started in November, was rescheduled by Mr. Justice Pitfield.

The Plaintiff, Susan Heyes Inc. dba Hazel & Co., alleges that the Defendants Canada, BC, Vancouver, the GVTA, Canada Line Rapid Transit Co. Ltd. and InTransit BC is liable for misrepresentations, private nuisance and negligence. None of these allegations have been proven against the Defendants, who have admmitted no liability.

The two week long coroner’s inquest into the death of Kyle Tait, 16, concluded yesterday with the jury determining that his shooting was a homicide, not an accident. Kyle Tait was one of five teenagers aged between 14 and 18 who were in a vehicle that was pursued into Burnaby by all ten New Westminster police officers (in seven police cruisers) on duty on Tuesday, August 23, 2005. The pursuit ended in a collision which damaged six vehicles in a residential neighborhood. The jury heard evidence from at least four civilian witnesses that the teens’ vehicle was stalled and motionless when Cst. Todd Sweet fired three bullets into it, wounding the eighteen year old driver and killing Kyle instantly. No drugs, alcohol or weapons were found in the vehicle, which later turned out to have been stolen.

As it happened, Cst. Sweet was under criminal investigation at the time of the shooting as a result of kicking another car theft suspect in the head two months earlier while the suspect, Anthony White, was lying defenceless in handcuffs on the ground. The “cowardly attack” was witnessed by several other police officers, who were reportedly sickened by the assault. They reported it to their supervisors, who took no action. Apparently frustrated, they then wrote an anonymous letter dated July 2, 2005 to the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner in which they described the brutal kicking incident and reportedly said, “[Sweet] has been getting away with this for two long and its time that something was done about it.” This was apparently a reference to formal complaints lodged against Sweet by ten civilians between 1999 and 2005, all of which were investigated by Cst. Sweet’s New Westminster colleagues and ultimately dismissed as “unsubstantiated”.

After Cst. Sweet killed Kyle Tait, he declined an opportunity to explain what had happened. Instead, he went to Smart & Williams, the law firm of choice for police officers in trouble, which submitted brief written statements on their client’s behalf over the next couple of months. The statements purported to justify the shooting by asserting facts that were contradicted by other witnesses and evidence.

Cst. Sweet, the President of the New Westminster Police Association since 2000, was charged in February, 2007 with assault causing bodily harm for the attack on White and later convicted. He remains on duty.

Kyle Tait (1989-2005)

After a three year wait, Kyle Tait’s family will finally have an opportunity to seek answers to their questions when the coroner’s inquest into his death begins Monday in Burnaby. Sixteen year old Kyle was fatally shot by New Westminster police constable Todd Sweet on August 23, 2005 following a short police pursuit. Kyle was one of four teenagers, two boys and two girls, riding as passengers in a stolen SUV driven by Ian Campbell, 18, when Cst. Sweet fired three bullets into the vehicle. Campbell was struck in the hand and Kyle died at the scene. Fortunately, the bullets missed the two 14 year old girls and the 15 year old boy riding in the back seat.

On June 19, 2005, some two months before Kyle’s fatal shooting, Cst. Sweet had assaulted a car theft suspect in a “cowardly act suggesting perhaps an act of unlawful street justice”, according to Judge Weitzel’s reasons on sentencing. The judge noted that neither Sweet nor the other officers on the scene initially reported the assault and ordered Sweet to receive anger management counselling as part of his sentence for the criminal conviction of assault causing bodily harm.

Three months before that, in March, 2005, Sweet reportedly assaulted a 70 year old widow, who later sued for damages.

When asked why Cst. Sweet was still on active duty following the June, 2005 incident, New Westminster Chief Constable Lorne Zapotichny reportedly told The Vancouver Sun that he “did not have anough evidence to support the complaint [of excessive force]”. Kyle Tait’s family plans to pursue this issue, among others, at the inquest.

Read Judge Weitzel’s Reasons for Sentence in R. v. Sweet here

Read The Vancouver Sun, February 7, 2007 article here

Chief Constable Lorne Zapotichny

Constable Todd Sweet

The coroner’s inquest is now scheduled to commence Monday, August 25, 2008 at 9:30 a.m. at Coroner’s Court, Metrotower II, Burnaby, BC.

Note: In British Columbia, legal aid is not available to the family of the deceased. If they wish to be represented by counsel, they must pay a lawyer or find one who will work for free. Typically, all of the other participants are paid by public funds. This case is no different. Almost everyone who enters the room at the coroner’s inquest into Kyle Tait will be receiving taxpayer dollars to attend. That includes, the coroner, the coroner’s lawyer, the sheriff, the coroner’s staff, the lawyer for the City of New Westminster, the lawyer for Todd Sweet and the police officers who are required to attend as witnesses.

Any suggestion that the coroner’s counsel can represent the interests of the deceased is, in these police-involved cases at least, open to serious question.

The requirement that the family of the deceased must use their own money to pay for legal representation is, in my opinion, an unfair extra burden on them since they have usually suffered enough by the time an inquest is finally convened. The law needs to be reformed so that the deceased’s next of kin are on an equal footing with the public institutions that are usually involved in these cases.