After an unusual eight month adjournment, the coroner’s inquest into the death of Robert Bagnell is scheduled to resume tomorrow at the offices of the BC Coroners Service in Burnaby. In September of 1997, a five person jury heard evidence that Robert Bagnell, 45, died in June of 2004 after he was jolted with 50,000 volts from two Taser guns wielded by Vancouver Police ERT (SWAT) members. Bagnell, who had a pre-existing heart condition and was in poor health, was unarmed and alone in his bathroom when he was confronted by police. The inquest has heard that at least a dozen police officers responded to a 911 call for an ambulance.

Yesterday, the Commission for Public Complaints against the RCMP announced that it had amended the chair-initiated complaint into the fatal shooting of Kevin St. Arnaud:

“Mr. Paul Kennedy, Chair of the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP (CPC), the federal agency that provides independent civilian review of RCMP members’ conduct in performing their policing duties, has amended a complaint into the events related to the shooting death of Kevin St. Arnaud near Vanderhoof, British Columbia, pursuant to section 45.37(1) of the RCMP Act.

The inquest into Mr. St. Arnaud’s death occurred in January 2007. It became clear from evidence heard during the inquest that there are also issues relating to the adequacy of the original criminal investigation that need to be addressed as part of the Commission’s public complaint.

As such, Mr. Kennedy is amending his public complaint to add the following allegation:

Members of the RCMP failed to conduct an adequate investigation into the death of Mr. St. Arnaud.”

Kevin St. Arnaud

The coroner’s inquest jury heard evidence that RCMP constable Ryan Sheremetta, then 22, shot Kevin St. Arnaud, 29, three times in the chest from a distance of some 5.5 metres in the early morning hours of December 19, 2004. Kevin was intoxicated, unarmed, had his hands up and was holding only a white plastic bag and two plastic pill bottles just before he was killed.

Cst. Sheremetta testified he feared for his life and fired all three bullets from flat on his back as Kevin approached him in a menacing manner, shouting, “you’re gonna have to shoot me motherfucker”. However, his colleague Cst. Colleen Erickson, a twenty four year veteran of the RCMP, saw the shooting from nearby and testified that Sheremetta was standing “in a combat stance” when he fired the shots and that she did not hear the alleged threat. A civilian eyewitness reported that Sheremetta was standing just before the shots rang out, and that Kevin had his hands up in surrender.

The forensic evidence of three experts revealed that both men were standing, that Kevin was stationary just before he collapsed, and that the three fatal bullets entered his body in a downward trajectory of 30 to 40 degrees. The primary investigator, RCMP Staff Sgt. Glenn Krebs, conceded that he concluded in April of 2005 that there were “inaccuracies” in Sheremetta’s account , but his superior, RCMP Staff Sgt. Flath nonetheless subsequently advised Crown Counsel that there was “insufficient evidence” to support criminal charges.

Cst. Sheremetta reportedly remains on active duty with the RCMP in Kamloops, as does Cst. Paul Koester, who fatally shot Ian Bush in Houston, BC in October of 2005. Kevin St. Arnaud leaves three young children, his parents, two younger brothers and a sister.

Harriet Nahanee, an aboriginal elder and activist, died recently at the age of 71. She had just been released from the Surrey Pretrial Centre after serving a two week jail sentence for contempt of court for disobeying a court order made in a civil proceeding in which she was not named as a party.

Harriet was one of numerous local people who congregated at a Sea to Sky Highway construction site to demonstrate their displeasure with the government decision to blast an overland route through the sensitive Eagleridge Bluffs ecosystem, rather than build a much less obtrusive tunnel.

No one was charged with any criminal offence as a result of the protest demonstration. Rather, according to the anachronsitic British Columbia method of dealing with such matters, the corporate contractors, Peter Kiewit & Sons Ltd., commenced a sham* civil lawsuit and obtained an injunction restraining anyone from being in the vicinity of the work site. Harriet and others were accused of contempt of court when they ignored the order, and they were sanctioned accordingly, in a process described by another B.C. jurist as “officially induced abuse of process”, the use of civil proceedings for a collateral criminal objective.

Ironically, 71 year old Harriet Nahanee, a gentle soul, frail and in ill health, spent more time in prison than serial convicted sex offender Tom Ellison, a middle aged teacher who sexually exploited his students, or Doug Walls, who was convicted of defrauding a bank of about a million dollars. Both were given conditional sentences, meaning they will spend no time in jail.

Here is the excerpt from the judge’s reasons on sentencing, fully explaining why Harriet Nahanee was sent to jail for fourteen days:

“I will next deal with Harriet Nahanee. Ms. Nahanee did not admit her contempt. She took the position that the court did not have jurisdiction over her and left the court, after I gave reasons on the preliminary issue involving the Royal Proclamation. She did not attend the balance of her contempt hearing. Ms. Nahanee demonstrated no remorse and did not apologize for her conduct. She was one of the most prominent and public contemnors. She, of course, made no submissions regarding an appropriate sanction and I have no information regarding her circumstances. I will sentence her to 14 days.”

One could well ask;

Did Harriet Nahanee’s punishment fit the “crime” of attempting to speak out against the desecration of the environment?

By jailing her, a respected aboriginal elder, did the court do anything to enhance respect for the rule of law?

*In my opinion, the civil action is a sham because it was not commenced for any reason other than to procure the arrest and punishment of those persons whose conduct the corporate plaintiffs found objectionable. As at least one judge has said, a proceeding like this is nothing less than an abuse of the court’s process, a civil action commenced for the collateral purpose of imposing criminal sanctions.

A report by former appellate justice Joe Wood, Q.C. is to be released to the public today, according to media accounts.

This writer hopes that the report will finally recommend that civilian investigators, not police, be given the responsibility to investigate cases of serious injury or death involving police officers. That is the model in Ontario, Quebec and Great Britain, for example.

Once the report is released, we will post further commentary here.

The Attorney General of British Columbia, ably represented by three lawyers at my successful six day civil trial, has filed a Notice of Appeal in the Court of Appeal seeking to have the $5,000 damages award against it set aside. The appeal will be heard in another six months or so and, when all the bills are in, will probably cost BC taxpayers at least another $20,000.

I had repeatedly asked for an apology for my arrest, strip search, jailing and seizure of my car, and would have gladly accepted one just after the incident or even just before the trial, four years later. However, the City of Vancouver and the Attorney General of BC have spent years defending this case vigorously, at what must be horrendous public expense.

Sigh. Sometimes, you just have to wonder….

Click here for a link to a copy of the appeal documents.

Click here for a link to the BC Supreme Court trial decision.

Click here for a link to one of the interlocutory (pretrial) decisions.