N.L. court defends political dissent
Man hospitalized involuntarily
ST. JOHN’S, N.L.• A Newfoundland court has issued a ringing defence of political dissent after a man who sent a series of angry tweets about a police shooting was detained and locked up in a mental institution.
“If anger about political events and words of defiance to authorities are dealt with as signs of mental illness .... warranting involuntary committal, then our society is in a dangerous place,” said a ruling from the Newfoundland and Labrador Court of Appeal.
“Such anger and defiance are characteristic of political dissent. As the history of authoritarian societies has taught us, confinement in a mental institution is a particularly insidious way of stifling dissent, directly and through intimidation,” said the three- judge court, which included Justice Malcolm Rowe, who has since joined the Supreme Court of Canada.
Andrew Abbass posted several angry tweets following the fatal shooting of Don Dunphy in Mitchells Brook, N. L. by an RNC officer assigned to Premier Paul Davis’s protective detail.
“Executed just after Easter Sunday dinner with his daughter. She must be devastated,” read one, according to a story by The Telegraph newspaper in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
“# RNC claim that executing citizens outside their jurisdiction for Twitter misunderstandings is a standard practice,” read another.
Two days after the shooting Royal Newfoundland Constabulary officers went to his home. He was detained and taken to the psychiatric unit at Western Memorial Hospital in Corner Brook, N.L., on April 7, 2015.
At the hospital two physicians “completed the necessary paperwork that resulted in his involuntary admission,” according to the appeal court decision.
Abbass challenged his detention in provincial Supreme Court, claiming he was not suffering from a mental disorder and that the doctors’ certificates of involuntary admission did not cite grounds for his detention. But the judge declined jurisdiction, and dismissed his application. Abbass was held for a week before being released.
The appeal court said the lower-court judge should not have declined jurisdiction.
“Mr. Abbass felt that what the police and physicians did was without proper authority. He sought the vindication of having a Supreme Court judge affirm this,” said the ruling.
“The courts must always be there for the vindication of the citizen with what he or she views as the wrongful exercise of authority. Mr. Abbass was denied his day in court. He should have had it.”
The court also questioned whether the confinement was a way of stifling dissent.
“Was this the intent of the police in this case? Did the physicians simply lend their authority to what the police asked them to do? Did they assume that a person who acts in the way Mr. Abbass did needs help and further assessment and observation, without turning their minds to the specific limited statutory criteria that would justify his deprivation of liberty?”
It added: “The reality is that if you are involuntarily confined, you are viewed differently; you are seen as less credible. That is not how it should be but that is how it is. As well, there is the intimidation factor. If the police can take you away once and the physicians confine you, maybe they will do so again.”
In its ruling, the appeal court said the first psychiatric assessment of Abbass took 19 minutes before a doctor certified a certificate of involuntary admission. The certificate noted the patient showed some signs “consistent with paranoia,” and said he needed observation and assessment.
The second certificate was completed five minutes later, and noted Abbass had expressed anger about the shooting. The doctor added: “In order to establish Mr. Andrew Abbass’ personal safety as well as public safety, further observation and assessment is necessary in a secure facility as the least restrictive measure at this time.”
The appeal court said both certificates appeared to rely on second-hand facts and made no attempt to identify the mental disorder in question.
It said the judge owed a duty to Abbass to look further into the circumstances of his case, which “appear to be extraordinary.”
An RNC constable shot Dunphy on Easter Sunday 2015. Const. Joe Smyth, a member of then- premier Paul Davis’s security detail, has testified he shot Dunphy, 58, once in the left chest and twice in the head in self defence after he aimed a rifle at him.
Smyth has said he went to Dunphy’s home to check out political comments Dunphy had made on Twitter.