Justice for Tina Fontaine shouldn’t mean injustice for accused: defence
A defence lawyer is arguing that justice for a 15-year-old girl whose body was found dumped in a Winnipeg river shouldn’t mean injustice for the man charged with murder in her death.
Tony Kavanagh says there is no DNA evidence linking 56-year-old Raymond Cormier to Tina Fontaine or the duvet cover her body was concealed in when it was found in August 2014.
Kavanagh says the Crown can’t prove that Tina didn’t die from a drug overdose or naturally in what he called the “underbelly of the city.”
He says that alone is enough to create reasonable doubt, and Cormier shouldn’t be convicted
just because of his rough lifestyle.
The Crown argues Cormier’s own words prove his guilt.
He was recorded by police in a bugged apartment telling a woman that he would make a bet that Tina was killed because “I found out she was 15 years old.”
In another, Cormier was heard arguing with a woman and saying that there was a little girl in a “grave someplace screaming at the top of her lungs for me to finish the job. And guess what? I finished the job.”
“This case can be quickly decided because the words he speaks are admissions of murder, plain and simple,” prosecutor Jim Ross told the jury Tuesday. “He’s exposed here legally ... it could make him a pedophile.”
“You all know who the little girl in the grave is,” Ross continued.
Kavanagh said there are issues with the quality of the recordings. He asked the jury to consider Cormier’s denials to police.
“We say Mr. Cormier was telling the truth when he said he didn’t kill Tina Fontaine,” said Kavanagh. “We say you should find Mr. Cormier’s version and denials believable. We say that raises doubt and you must acquit.”
He said the are too many holes in the Crown’s case.
“Sadly we don’t know how she died,” said Kavanagh. “Her body was found in a highly suspicious manner and that’s not frankly a cause of death.”
Tina’s body, wrapped in a duvet cover and weighed down by rocks, was pulled from the Red River in Winnipeg several days after she disappeared in August 2014.
She had been staying at a hotel in the care of social services when she was reported missing.
Court has already heard that Tina was raised by her greataunt on the Sagkeeng First Nation, 120 kilometres north of Winnipeg, but went to the city to visit her mother. It was there that the girl became an exploited youth.