Your duty to judge, jury told

The Crown attorney prosecuting Toronto Police Constable James Forcillo, in a ringing call to civic duty, has told jurors in the case that they are perfectly situated and qualified to judge the 32-year-old officer’s conduct the night he shot and killed Sammy Yatim.

Referring to defence lawyer Peter Brauti’s claim that it’s “almost impossible” for civilians who have never stood in police shoes to fairly judge them, Milan Rupic delivered a stern reminder.

“In our system of justice, in our liberal democracy, the police do not get to judge themselves,” Rupic said in wrapping up his closing remarks on Friday. “Police officers cannot and certainly do not deserve to be treated differently from any other accused person,” he said.

Rupic told the jurors “you may wonder about what kind of allowance we should properly give a police officer when they see a teenager holding a knife on a streetcar.

“The Crown knows as well as anyone, and better than most, that police officers at times have a dangerous job, and that sometimes they are properly required to use force.”

But, Rupic said, they are “required to use force in a responsible manner.

“There is a law in Canada that says when police may and may not use lethal force. It is the rule of law that separates this country from other places in the world.

“In Canada, police officers are not permitted to kill anyone unless it is reasonable and necessary in order to prevent death or grievous bodily harm.”

And, the prosecutor said, Forcillo’s use of lethal force against Yatim on July 27, 2013 was neither reasonable nor necessary.

The 18-year-old, under the influence of Ecstasy and brandishing a switchblade and at one point his exposed penis, was shot eight times by Forcillo as he stood near the open front doors of the streetcar.

Forcillo fired two volleys about five seconds apart — the first three bullets tearing through Yatim’s heart, shattering his spine and paralyzing him, and fracturing his right arm. These were the lethal shots, though Forcillo didn’t know that then.

As Yatim lay on his back at the front of the vehicle, never relinquishing the knife, Forcillo fired the second volley of six shots — because, Forcillo testified at trial, of his belief that Yatim had raised himself up almost to a 45-degree angle and was about to get to his feet.

The officer acknowledged that he was mistaken, and said he was shocked when he saw the extensive video in the case and realized Yatim in fact had moved “so little.” He wouldn’t have fired these shots, he said, if he’d known.

Defence l awyer Brauti called a psychologist who testified sometimes, at moments of great stress, first responders like soldiers and police may experience tunnel vision and auditory distortions. But that witness “never suggested that stress ... could induce hallucinations or cause a person to see things that were not there,” Rupic said.

The officer’s claim that “he saw a dying young man getting off the floor” is nothing but a “contrivance” by Forcillo to “justify the unjustifiable.”

“Sammy Yatim was not Lazarus and he did not get up off the floor. He did not need to get shot.”

Rupic also said that Forcillo — and several of his fellow officers on the scene that night who also testified here — exaggerated or made up details of how aggressive Yatim purportedly seemed.

While virtually none of the civilian witnesses who had been on the streetcar or on the street mentioned the supposed tension in Yatim’s body or his clenched jaw, held out by Forcillo as signs that he was preparing to come off the streetcar to attack him, Rupic said the police witnesses “shaded their evidence” to bolster Forcillo’s claim that Yatim wanted to fight.

The prosecutor was particularly scornful of the testimony of Sergeant Dan Pravica, the officer who arrived, as per Forcillo’s request, on the scene with a Taser and proceeded to use it on Yatim as he lay on the streetcar floor.

He was “untruthful,” the prosecutor said. “You can’t believe anything he said unless it’s on video. He gave false evidence in a shameless attempt to prejudice you against Sammy Yatim. You should expect more from police.”

Pravica’s conduct that night is under investigation by the Office of the Independent Police Review Director.

Pravica also testified that as he arrived, he saw Yatim’s torso rise up and heard guttural sounds.

“It was a shameful lie against a young man who did many awful things that night,” Rupic said, adding Pravica was trying to “make the dead young man look bad so police would have an excuse for what they did to him.”

In fact, Rupic said, there was no need for Forcillo to fire at Yatim once, let alone a second time: He wasn’t a threat, he was contained on the streetcar and, as the prosecutor said once sorrowfully, “he was not there to fight anybody to the end.”

Rupic closed his address with some of the most stirring words regularly used in criminal courtrooms, taken from a paragraph registrars read aloud at the start of all jury trials: “For his trial he hath put himself upon his country, which country you are ...”

And Rupic told the jurors, “For the purposes of deciding the defendant’s guilt or innocence you are our country. There is no one who will decide but you.”

Ontario Superior Court Justice Ed Then is under the weather, he told the jurors, and won’t give them final instructions until Thursday.