Hearing into mother’s murder delayed again
Ethics committee looking at how police handled case
The Police Ethics Committee hearings into how five Montreal police officers handled pleas for help from Maria Altagracia Dorval, a mother murdered by her ex-husband in October 2010, were to resume Thursday morning.
Instead, the hearings have once again been delayed because of a demand by the lawyer of one of the police officers cited for breach of ethics in the case. The committee members have agreed to postpone resumption of the hearings until Sept. 4, a full four years after most of the events that the committee is trying to examine took place.
Some observers are concerned that significant delays in deliberations by the Police Ethics Committee can result in justice denied to complainants.
“When you look at the work of the Police Ethics Committee, you will see that a lot of the sensitive or delicate files take much longer than average,” said Alain Arsenault, a lawyer who often represents civilians with complaints against police.
This is the second delay granted in this case due to one of the cited police officers being unable to attend the hearings because he or she is off work due to illness.
The case has also been delayed because of numerous demands by police lawyers to place publication bans on certain testimony, which lawyers for The Gazette have challenged and mostly had removed.
Another major delay came when the mandate of the committee chairperson, Michèle Cohen, ended last spring and the provincial government decided not to renew it. Cohen had chaired the hearings from their start in November 2012 until May 2013. The hearings were to resume in December 2013, chaired by Richard Luticone, but they were again delayed until March due to the illness of one of the cited police officers.
Arsenault said the concern is that if one officer is asking for delays in the procedure, the others may at some point claim the hearings should be called off because they are taking too long. (A spokesperson for the Police Ethics Committee refused to give the name of the police officer who has asked for the delay, but confirmed it was the same officer in both delays).
“When police are involved, there are always delays,” Ar- senault said.
“Sometimes it is obviously strategic. I won’t say it is the norm, but it happens regularly enough,” he said.
Edens Kenol was convicted of first-degree murder of Dorval in spring 2012, and sentenced to life in prison, with no chance of parole for 25 years.
Dorval’s family launched a civil lawsuit against the city of Montreal in October 2013, claiming police officers failed to respond adequately to Dorval’s repeated complaints about her ex-husband in the months preceding her death.
The family, which includes Dorval’s father, stepmother, 7-year-old sister and two children (now age six and 13) are requesting $683,484 to cover funeral costs, education costs of Dorval’s children and young sister, and to compensate for damages and loss of emotional support.
In a defence statement filed in Superior Court last month, lawyers for the city argued that neither the city nor any Montreal police officer had erred in any way that led to the death of Dorval.
Further, the statement claims all five officers involved in the case acted with “competence, diligence and prudence” in the case.
The defence claims that Montreal police were only informed that Kenol had threatened Dorval and their children on Oct. 11, 2010 — six days before the murder — and not earlier as the family claims. Also, even if Kenol had been arrested on Oct. 11 — police say they tried but were unable to locate him on that date — he would have been released a few days later and could have committed the murder anyway.
The statement says nothing in what had been reported by Dorval would have suggested a murder was imminent. City lawyers also argue the financial demands of the family are exaggerated considering Dorval was not working at the time of her death.