Glacial pace of justice exacts a terrible price
In the words of the great English novelist John Galsworthy, someone gave the machine that is justice a push.
Only 15 years later did it finally run out of gas and stop rolling on.
Virtually no one in its path escaped unscathed, with the reputations of the Canadian criminal justice system, prosecutors, the Toronto police force, the cops who investigate their own and even the press all left damaged.
The five former Toronto drug squad officers who were the machine’s target and suffered its most devastating effects were on Friday spared a jail term by Ontario Superior Court Judge Gladys Pardu.
That small mercy, if that’s what it was, did little to mitigate the quintet’s long voyage on what Toronto Police Association boss Mike McCormack recently described as “the ship of the damned.”
Whatever the outcome of the trial was, whatever the sentences handed down, McCormack told Postmedia earlier this week, the men “were judged and convicted years ago in the court of public opinion. You can’t beat the conspiracies; it’s just the reality of the world we live in.”
In the packed downtown courtroom where the judge read her 22-page decision aloud, McCormack’s words rang true.
Families and friends of the five men appeared too exhausted to even be relieved by the fact their loved ones weren’t going to jail, while from the press, there was disappointed grumbling about the lightness of the sentences.
The judge herself called the impact of the protracted proceedings “catastrophic,” noted the five men had been in “the cross-hairs” of investigators since 1998, said that some comments reported by media “have amounted to hyper- bolic vilification for conduct” far beyond the offences they were convicted of, and concluded that in and of itself the process “constitutes an enormous deterrent to any officer tempted to cut corners or lie under oath.”
Judge Pardu sentenced each of the now middle-aged men — all of whom were convicted by a jury last June of attempting to obstruct justice, with three also being convicted of perjury, but acquitted of many more, including such serious ones as fraud, assault and theft — to 45 days of house arrest.
The convictions all came in relation to a warrantless search of a heroin dealer’s apartment and in the officers’ efforts to cover up the fact they had entered the flat before they got a search warrant.
Judge Pardu didn’t minimize the misconduct — she dismissed the notion of what’s known as “noble cause corruption,” law-breaking done to catch criminals — but she noted the only possible gain for the five men was “perhaps shortening their work day by a couple of hours ...
“There was nothing abusive about the manner in which the search was conducted and the occupants were well-treated,” the judge said. And, she added, “There is no doubt that they had grounds to obtain a warrant.”
Only one of the five, Constable Steven Correia, is still a serving officer with the Toronto force.
For him, the custodial sentence handed out by Judge Pardu — though the men will be able to serve their sentences at home, with conditions, they are nonetheless considered custodial terms — means his status immediately changes from suspended with pay to suspended without it.
It is expected the five may still appeal their convictions of last summer. Pending the results of any appeal, the 45-year-old Correia is faced with the choice of hanging on by his fingernails to a job with no income, or resigning.
The other four former members of the long-disbanded central drug squad — leader John Schertzer and officers Ned Maodus, Joe Miched and Raymond Pollard — all walked away from the job years ago as the process dragged on, exacting a terrible price on their mental health and upon their families.
The case began in February of 1998 when internal charges under the provincial Police Act were laid against the men.
But though these charges were dismissed that fall, other investigations — no fewer than three criminal probes — followed.
As Correia’s lawyer Harry Black mused Friday, “When a police officer is charged, the prosecution effort that is put in is enormous. I don’t know of anything that equals it. Allegations of police misconduct and crime are obviously very serious, but compared to other crimes, unsolved murders … I think people would be very surprised. ”
In fact, at one point five years ago, another Ontario Superior Court judge, Ian Nordheimer, actually stayed all the charges against the five.
He was sharply critical of the glacial pace of the prosecution, particularly in disclosing the case to defence lawyers and especially in view of the efforts of lead outside investigator, RCMP Chief Superintendent John Neily, to stir to action those at Ontario’s Special Prosecutions Unit. But Judge Nordheimer’s decision was overturned at the Ontario Court of Appeal, and a new trial ordered.
Many years ago, when rumours were swirling about the five men and their purported “corruption,” I remember attending one of their court appearances.
Schertzer’s wife, who is a homicide detective with Toronto, was there to support her husband. I remember a colleague telling me she bought designer clothes, the inference being with ill-gotten gains. “Look at those shoes,” the colleague sniffed. I complimented Det. Schertzer on the shoes and asked where she got them. “Aldo,” she said, and sure enough, on my way home, I found them in one of the chain’s shops.
They were $80, or something. They were cheap; the willowy Ms. Schertzer had just made them look expensive.
There’s a lesson in that, and in the whole story of the drug squad five, in the first about the power of gossip, in the second about the untrammelled power of the state.